LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA 
SANTA  CRUZ 


SANTA     CRUZ 


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Gift  ot 


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Mr. Nelson  N. Scotch!  erjl 


SANTA     CRUZ 


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CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 


CHEERFUL 
BY    REQUEST 

BY 
EDNA  FERBER 

AUTHOR  OF  "DAWN  O'HARA,"  "BUTTERED  SIDE  DOWN  " 
"ROAST  BEEF  MEDIUM,"  "FANNY  HERSELF" 


GARDEN  CITY  NEW  YOKE 

DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  COMPANY 

1919 


Copyright,  igiS,  by 
DOUBLEDAY,   PAGE  &   COMPANY 

All  rights  reserved,  including  that  of 

translation  into  foreign  languages  t 

including  the  Scandinavian 


COPYRIGHT,  IQI3,  1914,  1915,  BY  THE  CURTIS  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

COPYRIGHT,  1917,  BY  P.  F.  COLLIER  &  SON,  INC. 
COPYRIGHT,  IQI7,  1918,  BY  THE  METROPOLITAN  MAGAZINE  COMPANY 


PS 

3 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  CHEERFUL — BY  REQUEST 3 

II.  THE  GAY  OLD  DOG 38 

III.  THE  TOUGH  GUY 73 

IV.  THE  ELDEST 113 

V.  THAT'S  MARRIAGE 143 

VI.  THE  WOMAN  WHO  TRIED  TO  BE  GOOD  .     .     .  181 

VII.  THE  GIRL  WHO  WENT  RIGHT 200 

VIII.  THE  HOOKER-UP-THE-BACK 224 

IX.  THE  GUIDING  Miss  GOWD 250 

X.    SOPHY-AS-SHE-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN        .       .       .       .  278 

XI.  THE  THREE  OF  THEM 305 

XII.  SHORE  LEAVE 329 


CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 


CHEERFUL-BY  REQUEST 


CHEERFUL — BY    REQUEST 

THE  editor  paid  for  the  lunch  (as  editors  do). 
He  lighted  his  seventh  cigarette  and  leaned 
back.  The  conversation,  which  had  zigzagged  from 
the  war  to  Zuloaga,  and  from  Rasputin  the  Monk 
to  the  number  of  miles  a  D arrow  would  go  on  a  gallon, 
narrowed  down  to  the  thin,  straight  line  of  business. 

"Now  don't  misunderstand.  Please!  We're  not 
presuming  to  dictate.  Dear  me,  no!  We  have  always 
felt  that  the  writer  should  be  free  to  express  that 
which  is  in  his — ah — heart.  But  in  the  last  year 
we've  been  swamped  with  these  drab,  realistic  stories. 
Strong,  relentless  things,  you  know,  about  dish- 
washers, with  a  lot  of  fine  detail  about  the  fuzz  of 
grease  on  the  rim  of  the  pan.  And  then  those  drear 
and  hopeless  ones  about  fallen  sisters  who  end  it  all 
in  the  East  River.  The  East  River  must  be  choked 
up  with  'em.  Now,  I  know  that  life  is  real,  life  is 
earnest,  and  I'm  not  demanding  a  happy  ending,  ex- 
actly. But  if  you  could — that  is — would  you — do 
you  see  your  way  at  all  clear  to  giving  us  a  fairly 

I 


4  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

cheerful  story?  Not  necessarily  Glad,  but  not  so 
darned  Russian,  if  you  get  me.  Not  pink,  but  not 
all  grey  either.  Say— mauve."  .  .  . 

That  was  Josie  Fifer's  existence.  Mostly  grey, 
with  a  dash  of  pink.  Which  makes  mauve. 

Unless  you  are  connected  (which  you  probably  are 
not)  with  the  great  firm  of  Hahn  &  Lohman,  theatrical 
producers,  you  never  will  have  heard  of  Josie  Fifer. 

There  are  things  about  the  theatre  that  the  public 
does  not  know.  A  statement,  at  first  blush,  to  be 
disputed.  The  press  agent,  the  special  writer,  the 
critic,  the  magazines,  the  Sunday  supplement,  the 
divorce  courts — what  have  they  left  untold?  We 
know  the  make  of  car  Miss  Billboard  drives;  who 
her  husbands  are  and  were;  how  much  the  movies 
have  offered  her;  what  she  wears,  reads,  says,  thinks, 
and  eats  for  breakfast.  Snapshots  of  author  writing 
play  at  place  on  Hudson;  pictures  of  the  play  in 
rehearsal;  of  the  director  directing  it;  of  the  stage 
hands  rewriting  it — long  before  the  opening  night 
we  know  more  about  the  piece  than  does  the  play- 
wright himself,  and  are  ten  times  less  eager  to  see  it. 

Josie  Fifer's  knowledge  surpassed  even  this.  For 
she  was  keeper  of  the  ghosts  of  the  firm  of  Hahn  & 
Lohman.  Not  only  was  she  present  at  the  birth 
of  a  play;  she  officiated  at  its  funeral.  She  carri- 
ed the  keys  to  the  closets  that  housed  the  skele- 
tons of  the  firm.  When  a  play  died  of  inanition, 
old  age,  or — as  was  sometimes  the  case — before  it  was 


CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST  5 

born,  it  was  Josie  Fifer  who  laid  out  its  remains  and 
followed  it  to  the  grave. 

Her  notification  of  its  demise  would  come  thus: 

"Hello,  Fifer!  This  is  McCabe"  (the  property 
man  of  H.  &  L.  at  the  phone). 

"Well?" 

"A  little  waspish  this  morning,  aren't  you,  Jose- 
phine?" 

"I've  got  twenty-five  bathing  suits  for  the  No.  2 
'Ataboy'  company  to  mend  and  clean  and  press  be- 
fore five  this  afternoon.  If  you  think  I'm  going  to 
stand  here  wasting  my " 

"All  right,  all  right!  I  just  wanted  to  tell  you 
that  'My  Mistake'  closes  Saturday.  The  stuffll  be 
up  Monday  'morning  early." 

A  sardonic  laugh  from  Josie.  "And  yet  they  say 
1  What's  in  a  name!'" 

The  unfortunate  play  had  been  all  that  its  title 
implies.  Its  purpose  was  to  star  an  actress  who 
hadn't  a  glint.  Her  second-act  costume  alone  had 
cost  $700,  but  even  Russian  sable  bands  can't  carry 
a  bad  play.  The  critics  had  pounced  on  it  with  the 
savagery  of  their  kind  and  hacked  it,  limb  from  limb, 
leaving  its  carcass  to  rot  under  the  pitiless  white  glare 
of  Broadway.  The  dress  with  the  Russian  sable  bands 
went  the  way  of  all  Hahn  &  Lohman  tragedies.  Josie 
Fifer  received  it,  if  not  reverently,  still  appreciatively. 

"I  should  think  Sid  Hahn  would  know  by  this  time," 
she  observed  sniffly,  as  her  expert  fingers  shook  out  the 


6  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

silken  folds  and  smoothed  the  fabulous  fur,  "that 
auburn  hair  and  a  gurgle  and  a  Lucille  dress  don't 
make  a  play.  Besides,  Fritzi  Kirke  wears  the  biggest 
shoe  of  any  actress  I  ever  saw.  A  woman  with  feet 
like  that" — she  picked  up  a  satin  slipper,  size  7^  C 
— "hasn't  any  business  on  the  stage.  She  ought  to 
travel  with  a  circus.  Here,  Etta.  Hang  this  away  in 
D,  next  to  the  amethyst  blue  velvet,  and  be  sure  and 
lock  the  door." 

McCabe  had  been  right.    A  waspish  wit  was  Josie's. 

The  question  is  whether  to  reveal  to  you  now  where 
it  was  that  Josie  Fifer  reigned  thus,  queen  of  the  cast- 
offs;  or  to  take  you  back  to  the  days  that  led  up  to 
her  being  there — the  days  when  she  was  Jose  Fyfer  on 
the  programme. 

Her  domain  was  the  storage  warehouse  of  Hahn  & 
Lohman,  as  you  may  have  guessed.  If  your  business 
lay  Forty-third  Street  way,  you  might  have  passed 
thr.  Wilding  a  hundred  times  without  once  giving  it 
a  seeing  glance.  It  was  not  Forty-third  Street  of  the 
small  shops,  the  smart  crowds,  and  the  glittering 
motors.  It  was  the  Forty-third  lying  east  of  the 
Grand  Central  sluice  gates;  east  of  fashion;  east, 
in  a  word,  of  Fifth  Avenue — a  great  square  brick 
building  smoke-grimed,  cobwebbed,  and  having  the 
look  of  a  cold-storage  plant  or  a  car  barn  fallen  into 
disuse;  dusty,  neglected,  almost  eerie.  Yet  within 
it  lurks  Romance,  and  her  sombre  sister  Tragedy, 
and  their  antic  brother  Comedy,  the  cut-up. 


CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST  7^ 

A  worn  flight  of  wooden  steps  leads  up  from  the 
sidewalk  to  the  dim  hallway;  a  musty-smelling  passage 
wherein  you  are  met  by  a  genial  sign  which  reads: 

"No  admittance.    Keep  out.    This  means  you." 

To  confirm  this,  the  eye,  penetrating  the  gloom,  is 
confronted  by  a  great  blank  metal  door  that  sheathes 
the  elevator.  To  ride  in  that  elevator  is  to  know 
adventure,  so  painfully,  so  protestingly,  with  such 
creaks  and  jerks  and  lurchings  does  it  pull  itself  from 
floor  to  floor,  like  an  octogenarian  who,  grunting  and 
groaning,  hoists  himself  from  his  easy-chair  by  slow 
stages  that  wring  a  protest  from  ankle,  knee,  hip, 
back  and  shoulder.  The  corkscrew  stairway,  broken 
and  footworn  though  it  is,  seems  infinitely  less 
perilous. 

First  floor — second — third — fourth.  Whew!  And 
there  you  are  in  Josie  Fifer's  kingdom — a  great  front 
room,  unexpectedly  bright  and  even  cosy  with  its 
whir  of  sewing  machines:  tables,  and  tables,  and  tables, 
piled  with  orderly  stacks  of  every  sort  of  clothing, 
from  shoes  to  hats,  from  gloves  to  parasols;  and  in 
the  room  beyond  this,  and  beyond  that,  and  again 
beyond  that,  row  after  row  of  high  wooden  cabinets 
stretching  the  width  of  the  room,  and  forming  innu- 
merable aisles.  All  of  Bluebeard's  wives  could  have 
been  tucked  away  in  one  corner  of  the  remotest  and 
least  of  these,  and  no  one  the  wiser.  All  grimly  shut 
and  locked,  they  are,  with  the  key  in  Josie's  pocket. 
But  when,  at  the  behest  of  McCabe,  or  sometimes 


8  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

even  Sid  Hahn  himself,  she  unlocked  and  opened  one 
of  these  doors,  what  treasures  hung  revealed!  What 
shimmer  and  sparkle  and  perfume — and  moth  balls! 
The  long-tailed  electric  light  bulb  held  high  in  one  hand, 
Josie  would  stand  at  the  door  like  a  priestess  before 
her  altar. 

There  they  swung,  the  ghosts  and  the  skeletons, 
side  by  side.  You  remember  that  slinking  black  sa- 
tin snakelike  sheath  that  Gita  Morini  wore  in  "  Little 
Eyolf"?  There  it  dangles,  limp,  invertebrate,  yet 
how  eloquent!  No  other  woman  in  the  world  could 
have  worn  that  gown,  with  its  unbroken  line  from 
throat  to  hem,  its  smooth,  high,  black  satin  collar, 
its  writhing  tail  that  went  slip-slip-slipping  after 
her.  In  it  she  had  looked  like  a  sleek  and  wicked 
python  that  had  fasted  for  a  long,  long  time. 

Dresses  there  are  that  have  made  stage  history. 
Surely  you  remember  the  beruffled,  rose-strewn  con- 
fection in  which  the  beautiful  Elsa  Marriott  swam 
into  our  ken  in  "Mississipp7  "?  She  used  to  say, 
wistfully,  that  she  always  got  a  hand  on  her  entrance 
in  that  dress.  It  was  due  to  the  sheer  shock  of  delight 
that  thrilled  audience  after  audience  as  it  beheld  her 
loveliness  enhanced  by  this  floating,  diaphanous  tulle 
cloud.  There  it  hangs,  time-yellowed,  its  pristine 
freshness  vanished  quite,  yet  as^  fragrant  with  romance 
as  is  the  sere  and  withered  blossom  of  a  dead  white 
rose  pressed  within  the  leaves  of  a  book  of  love  poems. 
Just  next  it,  incongruously  enough,  flaunt  the  wicked 


CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST  9 

froufrou  skirts  and  the  low-cut  bodice  and  the  wasp 
waist  of  the  abbreviated  costume  in  which  Cora 
Kassell  used  so  generously  to  display  her  charms.  A 
rich  and  portly  society  matron  of  Pittsburgh  now — 
she  whose  name  had  been  a  synonym  for  pulchritude 
these  thirty  years;  she  who  had  had  more  cold  creams, 
hats,  cigars,  corsets,  horses,  and  lotions  named  for  her 
than  any  woman  in  history!  Her  ample  girth  would 
have  wrought  sad  havoc  with  that  eighteen-inch  waist 
now.  Gone  are  the  chaste  curves  of  the  slim  white 
silk  legs  that  used  to  kick  so  lithely  from  the  swirl 
of  lace  and  chiffon.  Yet  there  it  hangs,  pertly  pathetic, 
mute  evidence  of  her  vanished  youth,  her  delectable 
beauty,  and  her  unblushing  confidence  in  those  same. 

Up  one  aisle  and  down  the  next — velvet,  satin, 
lace  and  broadcloth — here  the  costume  the  great 
Canfield  had  worn  in  Richard  III;  there  the  little 
cocked  hat  and  the  slashed  jerkin  in  which  Maude 
Hammond,  as  Peterkins,  winged  her  way  to  fame  up 
through  the  hearts  of  a  million  children  whose  ages 
ranged  from  seven  to  seventy.  Brocades  and  ginghams; 
tailor  suits  and  peignoirs;  puffed  sleeves  and  tight — 
dramatic  history,  all,  they  spelled  failure,  success, 
hope,  despair,  vanity,  pride,  triumph,  decay.  Tragic 
ghosts,  over  which  Josie  Fifer  held  grim  sway! 

Have  I  told  you  that  Josie  Fifer,  moving  nimbly 
about  the  great  storehouse,  limped  as  she  went?  The 
left  leg  swung  as  a  normal  leg  should.  The  right  fol- 
lowed haltingly,  sagging  at  hip  and  knee.  And  that 


io  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

brings  us  back  to  the  reason  for  her  being  where  she 
was.    And  what. 

The  story  of  how  Josie  Fifer  came  to  be  mistress 
of  the  cast-off  robes  of  the  firm  of  Hahn  &  Loh- 
man  is  one  of  those  stage  tragedies  that  never  have 
a  public  performance.  Josie  had  been  one  of  those 
little  girls  who  speak  pieces  at  chicken-pie  suppers 
held  in  the  basement  of  the  Presbyterian  church.  Her 
mother  had  been  a  silly,  idle  woman  addicted  to 
mother  hubbards  and  paper-backed  novels  about 
the  house.  Her  one  passion  was  the  theatre,  a  passion 
that  had  very  scant  opportunity  for  feeding  in  Wapello, 
Iowa.  Josie's  piece-speaking  talent  was  evidently  a 
direct  inheritance.  Some  might  call  it  a  taint. 

Two  days  before  one  of  Josie's  public  appearances 
her,  mother  would  twist  the  child's  hair  into  innu- 
merable rag  curlers  that  stood  out  in  grotesque,  Topsy- 
like  bumps  all  over  her  fair  head.  On  the  eventful 
evening  each  rag  chrysalis  would  burst  into  a  full- 
blown butterfly  curl.  In  a  pale-blue,  lace-fretted 
dress  over  a  pale-blue  slip,  made  in  what  her  mother 
called  "Empire  style,"  Josie  would  deliver  herself 
of  "Entertaining  Big  Sister's  Beau"  and  other  sophis- 
ticated classics  with  an  incredible  ease  and  absence 
of  embarrassment.  It  wasn't  a  definite  boldness  in  her. 
She  merely  liked  standing  there  before  all  those  people, 
in  her  blue  dress  and  her  toe  slippers,  speaking  her 
pieces  with  enhancing  gestures  taught  her  by  her 
mother  in  innumerable  rehearsals. 


CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST  u 

Any  one  who  has  ever  lived  in  Wapello,  Iowa,  or 
its  equivalent,  remembers  the  old  opera  house  on  the 
corner  of  Main  and  Elm,  with  Schroeder's  drug  store 
occupying  the  first  floor.  Opera  never  came  within 
three  hundred  miles  of  Wapello,  unless  it  was  the  so- 
called  comic  kind.  It  was  before  the  day  of  the  ubiqui- 
tous moving-picture  theatre  that  has  since  been  the 
undoing  of  the  one-night  stand  and  the  ten-twenty- 
thirty  stock  company.  The  old  red-brick  opera  house 
furnished  unlimited  thrills  for  Josie  and  her  mother. 
From  the  time  Josie  was  seven  she  was  taken  to  see 
whatever  Wapello  was  offered  in  the  way  of  the  drama. 
That  consisted  mostly  of  plays  of  the  tell-me-more- 
about-me-mother  type. 

By  the  time  she  was  ten  she  knew  the  whole  reper- 
toire of  the  Maude  La  Vergne  Stock  Company  by 
heart.  She  was  blase  with  "East  Lynne"  and  "The 
Two  Orphans,"  and  even  "Camille"  left  her  cold. 
She  was  as  wise  to  the  trade  tricks  as  is  a  New  York 
first  nighter.  She  would  sit  there  in  the  darkened 
auditorium  of  a  Saturday  afternoon,  surveying  the 
stage  with  a  judicious  and  undeceived  eye,  as  she 
sucked  indefatigably  at  a  lollipop  extracted  from  the 
sticky  bag  clutched  in  one  moist  palm.  (A  bag  of  candy 
to  each  and  every  girl;  ji  ball  or  a  top  to  each  and  every 
boy!)  Josie  knew  that  the  middle-aged  soubrette  who 
came  out  between  the  first  and  second  acts  to  sing  a 
g\Eghdm-and-sunbonnet  song  would  whisk  of!  to  re- 
appear immediately  in  knee-length  pink  satin  and  curls. 


12  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

When  the  heroine  left  home  in  a  shawl  and  a  sudden 
snowstorm  that  followed  her  upstage  and  stopped  when 
she  went  off,  Josie  was  interested,  but  undeceived. 
She  knew  that  the  surprised-looking  white  horse  used 
in  the  Civil  War  comedy-drama  entitled  "His  Southern 
Sweetheart"  came  from  Joe  Brink's  livery  stable  in 
exchange  for  four  passes,  and  that  the  faithful  old 
negro  servitor  in  the  white  cotton  wig  would  save 
somebody  from  something  before  the  afternoon  was 
over. 

In  was  inevitable  that  as  Josie  grew  older  she  should 
take  part  in  home-talent  plays.  It  was  one  of  these 
tinsel  affairs  that  had  made  clear  to  her  just  where 
her  future  lay.  The  Wapello  Daily  Courier  helped 
her  in  her  decision.  She  had  taken  the  part  of  a  gipsy 
queen,  appropriately  costumed  in  slightly  soiled  white 
satin  slippers  with  four-inch  heels,  and  a  white 
satin  dress  enhanced  by  a  red  sash,  a  black  velvet 
bolero,  and  large  hoop  earrings.  She  had  danced  and 
sung  with  a  pert  confidence,  and  the  Courier  had  pro- 
nounced her  talents  not  amateur,  but  professional, 
and  had  advised  the  managers  (who,  no  doubt,  read 
the  Wapello  Courier  daily,  along  with  their  Morning 
Telegraph)  to  seek  her  out,  and  speedily. 

Josie  didn't  wait  for  them  to  take  the  hint.  She 
sought  them  out  instead.  There  followed  seven 
tawdry,  hard-working,  heartbreaking  years.  Supe, 
walk-on,  stock,  musical  comedy — Josie  went  through 
them  all.  If  any  illusions  about  the  stage  had  sur- 


CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST  13 

vived  her  Wapello  days,  they  would  have  vanished  in 
the  first  six  months  of  her  dramatic  career.  By  the 
time  she  was  twenty-four  she  had  acquired  the  wisdom 
of  fifty,  a  near-seal  coat,  a  turquoise  ring  with  a  number 
of  smoky-looking  crushed  diamonds  surrounding  it, 
and  a  reputation  for  wit  and  for  decency.  The  last 
had  cost  the  most. 

During  all  these  years  of  cheap  theatrical  board- 
ing houses  (the  most  soul-searing  cheapness  in 
the  world),  of  one-night  stands,  of  insult,  disappoint- 
ment, rebuff,  and  something  that  often  came  perilous- 
ly near  to  want,  Josie  Fifer  managed  to  retain  a  cer- 
tain humorous  outlook  on  life.  There  was  something 
whimsical  about  it.  She  could  even  see  a  joke  on  her- 
self. When  she  first  signed  her  name  Jose*  Fyfer, 
for  example,  she  did  it  with  an  appreciative  giggle 
and  a  glint  in  her  eye  as  she  formed  the  accent  mark 
over  the  e. 

"They'll  never  stop  me  now,"  she  said.  "I'm 
made.  But  I  wish  I  knew  if  that  J  was  pronounced 
like  H,  in  humbug.  Are  there  any  Spanish  blondes?" 

It  used  to  be  the  habit  of  the  other  women  in  the 
company  to  say  to  her:  "Jo,  I'm  blue  as  the  devil 
to-day.  Come  on,  give  us  a  laugh." 

She  always  obliged. 

And  then  came  a  Sunday  afternoon  in  late  August 
when  her  laugh  broke  off  short  in  the  middle,  and 
was  forever  after  a  stunted  thing. 

She  was  playing  Atlantic   City  in  a  second-rate 


14  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

musical  show.  She  had  never  seen  the  ocean  before, 
and  she  viewed  it  now  with  an  appreciation  that 
still  had  in  it  something  of  a  Wapello  freshness. 

They  all  planned  to  go  in  bathing  that  hot  August 
afternoon  after  rehearsal.  Josie  had  seen  pictures 
of  the  beauteous  bathing  girl  dashing  into  the  foam- 
ing breakers.  She  ran  across  the  stretch  of  glistening 
beach,  paused  and  struck  a  pose,  one  toe  pointed 
waterward,  her  arms  extended  affectedly. 

"So!"  she  said  mincingly.    "So  this  is  Paris!" 

It  was  a  new  line  in  those  days,  and  they  all  laughed, 
as  she  had  meant  tney  should.  So  she  leaped  into  the 
water  with  bounds  and  shouts  and  much  waving  of 
white  arms.  A  great  floating  derelict  of  a  log  struck 
her  leg  with  its  full  weight,  and  with  all  the  tremendous 
force  of  the  breaker  behind  it.  She  doubled  up  ridicu- 
lously, and  went  down  like  a  shot.  Those  on  the  beach 
laughed  again.  When  she  came  up,  and  they  saw 
her  distorted  face  they  stopped  laughing,  and  fished 
her  out.  Her  leg  was  broken  in  two  places,  and  mashed 
in  a  dozen. 

Jose  Fyfer's  dramatic  career  was  over.  (This  is 
not  the  cheery  portion  of  the  story.) 

When  she  came  out  of  the  hospital,  three  months 
later,  she  did  very  well  indeed  with  her  crutches. 
But  the  merry-eyed  woman  had  vanished — she  of  the 
Wapello  colouring  that  had  persisted  during  all  these 
years.  In  her  place  limped  a  wan,  shrunken,  tragic 
little  figure  whose  humour  had  soured  to  a  caustic 


CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST  15 

wit.  The  near-seal  coat  and  the  turquoise-and-crushed- 
diamond  ring  had  vanished  too. 

During  those  agonized  months  she  had  received 
from  the  others  in  the  company  such  kindness  and 
generosity  as  only  stage  folk  can  show — flowers, 
candy,  dainties,  magazines,  sent  by  every  one  from 
the  prima  donna  to  the  call  boy.  Then  the  show 
left  town.  There  came  a  few  letters  of  kind  inquiry, 
then  an  occasional  post  card,  signed  by  half  a  dozen 
members  of  the  company.  Then  these  ceased.  Josie 
Fifer,  in  her  cast  and  splints  and  bandages  and  pain, 
dragged  out  long  hospital  days  and  interminable  hos- 
pital nights.  She  took  a  dreary  pleasure  in  following 
the  tour  of  her  erstwhile  company  via  the  pages  of  the 
theatrical  magazines. 

"They're  playing  Detroit  this  week,"  she  would 
announce  to  the  aloof  and  spectacled  nurse.  Or: 
"  One-night  stands,  and  they're  due  in  Muncie,  Ind., 
to-night.  I  don't  know  which  is  worse — playing 
Muncie  for  one  night  or  this  moan  factory  for  a  three 
month's  run." 

When  she  was  able  to  crawl  out  as  far  as  the  long 
corridor  she  spoke  to  every  one  she  met.  As  she  grew 
stronger  she  visited  here  and  there,  and  on  the  slightest 
provocation  she  would  give  a  scene  ranging  all  the  way 
from  "Romeo  and  Juliet"  to  "The  Black  Crook." 
It  was  thus  she  first  met  Sid  Hahn,  and  felt  the  warm- 
ing, healing  glow  of  his  friendship. 

Some   said   that   Sid   Hahn's   brilliant   success   as 


16  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

a  manager  at  thirty-five  was  due  to  his  ability  to 
pick  winners.  Others  thought  it  was  his  refusal  to 
be  discouraged  when  he  found  he  had  picked  a  fail- 
ure. Still  others,  who  knew  him  better,  were  likely 
to  say:  "Why,  I  don't  know.  It's  a  sort  of — well, 

you  might  call  it  charm — and  yet .  Did  you  ever 

see  him  smile?  He's  got  a  million-dollar  grin.  You 
can't  resist  it." 

None  of  them  was  right.  Or  all  of  them.  Sid  Hahn, 
erstwhile  usher,  call  boy,  press  agent,  advance  man, 
had  a  genius  for  things  theatrical.  It  was  inborn. 
Dramatic,  sensitive,  artistic,  intuitive,  he  was  often 
rendered  inarticulate  by  the  very  force  and  variety  of 
his  feelings.  A  little,  rotund,  ugly  man,  Sid  Hahn, 
with  the  eyes  of  a  dreamer,  the  wide,  mobile  mouth  of 
a  humourist,  the  ears  of  a  comic  oP-clo'es  man.  His 
generosity  was  proverbial,  and  it  amounted  to  a 
vice. 

In  September  he  had  come  to  Atlantic  City  to  try 
out  "Splendour."  It  was  a  doubtful  play,  by  a 
new  author,  starring  Sarah  Haddon  for  the  first  time. 
No  one  dreamed  the  play  would  run  for  years,  make 
a  fortune  for  Hahn,  lift  Haddon  from  obscurity  to  the 
dizziest  heights  of  stardom,  and  become  a  classic  of  the 
stage. 

Ten  minutes  before  the  curtain  went  up  on  the 
opening  performance  Hahn  was  stricken  with  appendi- 
citis. There  was  not  even  time  to  rush  him  to  New 
York.  He  was  on  the  operating  table  before  the  second 


CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST  17 

act  was  begun.  When  he  came  out  of  the  ether  he  said : 
"How  did  it  go?" 

"Fine!"  beamed  the  nurse.  "You'll  be  out  in  two 
weeks." 

"Oh,  hell!  I  don't  mean  the  operation.  I  mean  the 
play." 

He  learned  soon  enough  from  the  glowing,  starry- 
eyed  Sarah  Haddon  and  from  every  one  connected  with 
the  play.  He  insisted  on  seeing  them  all  daily,  against 
his  doctor's  orders,  and  succeeded  in  working  up  a 
temperature  that  made  his  hospital  stay  a  four  weeks' 
affair.  He  refused  to  take  the  tryout  results  as  final. 

"Don't  be  too  bubbly  about  this  thing,"  he  cautioned 
Sarah  Haddon.  "I've  seen  too  many  plays  that  were 
skyrockets  on  the  road  come  down  like  sticks  when 
they  struck  New  York." 

The  company  stayed  over  in  Atlantic  City  for  a 
week,  and  Hahn  held  scraps  of  rehearsals  in  his  room 
when  he  had  a  temperature  of  102.  Sarah  Haddon 
worked  like  a  slave.  She  seemed  to  realise  that  her 
great  opportunity  had  come — the  opportunity  for  which 
hundreds  of  gifted  actresses  wait  a  lifetime.  Haddon 
was  just  twenty-eight  then — a  year  younger  than  Josie 
Fifer.  She  had  not  yet  blossomed  into  the  full  ra- 
diance of  her  beauty.  She  was  too  slender,  and  inclined 
to  stoop  a  bit,  but  her  eyes  were  glorious,  her  skin 
petal-smooth,  her  whole  face  reminding  one,  somehow, 
of  an  intelligent  flower.  Her  voice  was  a  golden, 
liquid  delight. 


i8  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

Josie  Fifer,  dragging  herself  from  bed  to  chair,  and 
from  chair  to  bed,  used  to  watch  for  her.  Harm's 
room  was  on  her  floor.  Sarah  Haddon,  in  her  youth 
and  beauty  and  triumph,  represented  to  Josie  all  that 
she  had  dreamed  of  and  never  realised;  all  that  she 
had  hoped  for  and  never  could  know.  She  used  to 
insist  on  having  her  door  open,  and  she  would  lie  there 
for  hours,  her  eyes  fixed  on  that  spot  in  the  hall  across 
which  Haddon  would  flash  for  one  brief  instant  on  her 
way  to  the  room  down  the  corridor.  There  is  about 
a  successful  actress  a  certain  radiant  something — a 
glamour,  a  luxuriousness,  an  atmosphere  that  suggest 
a  mysterious  mixture  of  silken  things,  of  perfume, 
of  adulation,  of  all  that  is  rare  and  costly  and  perishable 
and  desirable. 

Josie  Fifer's  stage  experience  had  included  none  of 
this.  But  she  knew  they  were  there.  She  sensed  that 
to  this  glorious  artist  would  come  all  those  fairy  gifts 
that  Josie  Fifer  would  never  possess.  All  things  about 
her — her  furs,  her  gloves,  her  walk,  her  hats,  her  voice, 
her  very  shoe  ties — were  just  what  Josie  would  have 
wished  for.  As  she  lay  there  she  developed  a  certain 
grim  philosophy. 

"She's  got  every  thing  a  woman  could  wish  for.  Me, 
I  haven't  got  a  thing.  Not  a  blamed  thing!  And  yet 
they  say  everything  works  out  in  the  end  according 
to  some  scheme  or  other.  Well,  what's  the  answer 
to  this,  I  wonder?  I  can't  make  it  come  out  right. 
I  guess  one  of  the  figures  must  have  got  away  from  me." 


CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST  19 

In  the  second  week  of  Sid  Hahn's  convalescence 
he  heard,  somehow,  of  Josie  Fifer.  It  was  charac- 
teristic of  him  that  he  sent  for  her.  She  put  a  chiffon 
scarf  about  the  neck  of  her  skimpy  little  kimono, 
spent  an  hour  and  ten  minutes  on  her  hair,  made  up 
outrageously  with  that  sublime  unconsciousness  that 
comes  from  too  close  familiarity  with  rouge  pad  and 
grease  jar,  and  went.  She  was  trembling  as  though 
facing  a  first-night  audience  in  a  part  she  wasn't  up 
on.  Between  the  crutches,  the  lameness,  and  the 
trembling  she  presented  to  Sid  Hahn,  as  she  stood 
in  the  doorway,  a  picture  that  stabbed  his  kindly, 
sensitive  heart  with  a  quick  pang  of  sympathy. 

He  held  out  his  hand.  Josie 's  crept  into  it.  At  the 
feel  of  that  generous  friendly  clasp  she  stopped  trem- 
bling. Said  Hahn: 

"My  nurse  tells  me  that  you  can  do  a  bedside  bur- 
lesque of  'East  Lynne'  that  made  even  that  Boston- 
looking  interne  with  the  thick  glasses  laugh.  Go  on 
and  do  it  for  me,  there's  a  good  girl.  I  could  use  a 
laugh  myself  just  now." 

And  Josie  Fifer  caught  up  a  couch  cover  for  a  cloak, 
with  the  scarf  that  was  about  her  neck  for  a  veil,  and, 
using  Hahn  himself  as  the  ailing  chee-ild,  gave  a  biting 
burlesque  of  the  famous  bedside  visit  that  brought 
the  tears  of  laughter  to  his  eyes,  and  the  nurse  flying 
from  down  the  hall.  "This  won't  do,"  said  that  austere 
person. 

"  Won't,  eh?    Go  on  and  stick  your  old  thermometer 


20  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

in  my  mouth.  What  do  I  care!  A  laugh  like  that  is 
worth  five  degrees  of  temperature." 

When  Josie  rose  to  leave  he  eyed  her  keenly,  and 
pointed  to  the  dragging  leg. 

"How  about  that?    Temporary  or  permanent?" 

"Permanent." 

"Oh,  fudge!  Who's  telling  you  that?  These  days 
they  can  do " 

"Not  with  this,  though.  That  one  bone  was  mashed 
into  about  twenty-nine  splinters,  and  when  it  came  to 
putting  'em  together  again  a  couple  of  pieces  were 
missing.  I  must've  mislaid  'em  somewhere.  Anyway, 
I  make  a  limping  exit — for  life." 

"Then  no  more  stage  for  you — eh,  my  girl?" 

"No  more  stage." 

Hahn  reached  for  a  pad  of  paper  on  the  table  at  his 
bedside,  scrawled  a  few  words  on  it,  signed  it  "S.  H." 
in  the  fashion  which  became  famous,  and  held  the 
paper  out  to  her. 

"When  you  get  out  of  here,"  he  said,  "you  come  to 
New  York,  and  up  to  my  office;  see?  Give  'em  thb 
at  the  door.  I've  got  a  job  for  you — if  you  want  it." 

And  that  was  how  Josie  Fifer  came  to  take  charge 
of  the  great  Hahn  &  Lohman  storehouse.  It  was 
more  than  a  storehouse.  It  was  a  museum.  It 
housed  the  archives  of  the  American  stage.  If  Hahn 
&  Lohman  prided  themselves  on  one  thing  more  than 
on  another,  it  was  the  lavish  generosity  with  which  they 
invested  a  play,  from  costumes  to  carpets.  A  period 


CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST  21 

play  was  a  period  play  when  they  presented  it.  You 
never  saw  a  French  clock  on  a  Dutch  mantel  in  a  Hahn 
&  Lohman  production.  No  hybrid  hangings  marred 
their  back  drop.  No  matter  what  the  play,  the  firm 
provided  its  furnishings  from  the  star's  slippers  to  the 
chandeliers.  Did  a  play  last  a  year  or  a  week,  at  the 
end  of  its  run  furniture,  hangings,  scenery,  rugs,  gowns, 
everything,  went  off  in  wagonloads  to  the  already 
crowded  storehouse  on  East  Forty-third  Street. 

Sometimes  a  play  proved  so  popular  that  its  original 
costumes,  outworn,  had  to  be  renewed.  Sometimes 
the  public  cried  "Thumbs  down!"  at  the  opening 
performance,  and  would  have  none  of  it  thereafter. 
That  meant  that  costumes  sometimes  reached  Josie 
Fifer  while  the  wounds  of  the  dressmaker's  needle 
still  bled  in  them.  And  whether  for  a  week  or  a  year 
fur  on  a  Hahn  &  Lohman  costume  was  real  fur;  its 
satin  was  silk-backed,  its  lace  real  lace.  No  paste,  or 
tinsel,  or  cardboard  about  H.  &  L. !  Josie  Fifer  could 
recall  the  scenes  in  a  play,  step  by  step  from  noting 
with  her  keen  eye  the  marks  left  on  costume  after 
costume  by  the  ravages  of  emotion.  At  the  end  of 
a  play's  run  she  would  hold  up  a  dress  for  critical 
inspection,  turning  it  this  way  and  that. 

"This  is  the  dress  she  wore  in  her  big  scene  at  the 
end  of  the  second  act  where  she  crawls  on  her  knees 
to  her  wronged  husband  and  pounds  on  the  door  and 
weeps.  She  certainly  did  give  it  some  hard  wear.  When 
Marriott  crawls  she  crawls,  and  when  she  bawls  she 


22  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

bawls.  I'll  say  that  for  her.  From  the  looks  of  this 
front  breadth  she  must  have  worn  a  groove  in  the 
stage  at  the  York." 

No  gently  sentimental  reason  caused  Hahn  &  Lohman 
to  house  these  hundreds  of  costumes,  these  tons  of  scen- 
ery, these  forests  of  furniture.  Neither  had  Josie 
Fifer  been  hired  to  walk  wistfully  among  them  like  a 
spinster  wandering  in  a  dead  rose  garden.  No,  they  were 
stored  for  a  much  thriftier  reason.  They  were 
stored,  if  you  must  know,  for  possible  future  use. 
H.  &  L.  were  too  clever  not  to  use  a  last  year's  costume 
for  a  this  year's  road  show.  They  knew  what  a  coat 
of  enamel  would  do  for  a  bedroom  set.  It  was  Josie 
Fifer's  duty  not  only  to  tabulate  and  care  for  these 
relics,  but  to  refurbish  them  when  necessary.  The 
sewing  was  done  by  a  little  corps  of  assistants  under 
Josie's  direction. 

But  all  this  came  with  the  years.  When  Josie  Fifer, 
white  and  weak,  first  took  charge  of  the  H.  &  L.  lares 
et  penateSj  she  told  herself  it  was  only  for  a  few  months — • 
a  year  or  two  at  most.  The  end  of  sixteen  years  found 
her  still  there. 

When  she  came  to  New  York,  "Splendour"  was  just 
beginning  its  phenomenal  three  years'  run.  The  city 
was  mad  about  the  play.  People  came  to  see  it  again 
and  again — a  sure  sign  of  a  long  run.  The  Sarah 
Haddon  second-act  costume  was  photographed,  copied 
(unsuccessfully),  talked  about,  until  it  became  as 
familiar  as  a  uniform.  That  costume  had  much  to  do 


CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST  23 

with  the  play's  success,  though  Sarah  Haddon  would 
never  admit  it.  "Splendour"  was  what  is  known  as  a 
period  play.  The  famous  dress  was  of  black  velvet, 
made  with  a  quaint,  full-gathered  skirt  that  made  Had- 
don's  slim  waist  seem  fairylike  and  exquisitely  supple. 
The  black  velvet  bodice  outlined  the  delicate  swell 
of  the  bust.  A  rope  of  pearls  enhanced  the  whiteness 
of  her  throat.  Her  hair,  done  in  old-time  scallops 
about  her  forehead,  was  a  gleaming  marvel  of  simplicity, 
and  the  despair  of  every  woman  who  tried  to  copy  it. 
The  part  was  that  of  an  Italian  opera  singer.  The  play 
pulsated  with  romance  and  love,  glamour  and  tragedy. 
Sarah  Haddon,  in  her  flowing  black  velvet  robe  and 
her  pearls  and  her  pallor,  was  an  exotic,  throbbing, 
exquisite  realisation  of  what  every  woman  in  the  audi- 
ence dreamed  of  being  and  every  man  dreamed  of  loving. 
Josie  Fifer  saw  the  play  for  the  first  time  from  a 
balcony  seat  given  her  by  Sid  Hahn.  It  left  her  trem- 
bling, red-eyed,  shaken.  After  that  she  used  to  see 
it,  by  hook  or  crook  whenever  possible.  She  used  to 
come  in  at  the  stage  door  and  lurk  back  of  the  scenes 
and  in  the  wings  when  she  had  no  business  there.  She 
invented  absurd  errands  to  take  her  to  the  theatre 
where  "Splendour"  was  playing.  Sid  Hahn  always 
said  that  after  the  big  third-act  scene  he  liked  to  watch 
the  audience  swim  up  the  aisle.  Josie,  hidden  in  the 
back-stage  shadows,  used  to  watch,  fascinated,  breath- 
less. Then,  one  night,  she  indiscreetly  was  led,  by  her 
absorbed  interest,  to  venture  too  far  into  the  wings. 


24  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

It  was  during  the  scene  where  Haddon,  hearing  a 
broken-down  street  singer  cracking  the  golden  notes 
of  "Ai'da"  into  a  thousand  mutilated  fragments, 
throws  open  her  window  and,  leaning  far  out,  pours  a 
shower  of  Italian  and  broken  English  and  laughter 
and  silver  coin  upon  her  amazed  compatriot  below. 

When  the  curtain  went  down  she  came  off  raging. 

"What  was  that?  Who  was  that  standing  in  the 
wings?  How  dare  any  one  stand  there!  Everybody 
knows  I  can't  have  any  one  in  the  wings.  Staring! 
It  ruined  my  scene  to-night.  Where's  McCabe?  Tell 
Mr.  Hahn  I  want  to  see  him.  Who  was  it?  Staring 
at  me  like  a  ghost!" 

Josie  had  crept  away,  terrified,  contrite,  and  yet 
resentful.  But  the  next  week  saw  her  back  at  the 
theatre,  though  she  took  care  to  stay  in  the  shadows. 

She  was  waiting  for  the  black  velvet  dress.  It  was 
more  than  a  dress  to  her.  It  was  infinitely  more  than 
a  stage  costume.  It  was  the  habit  of  glory.  It  epito- 
mised all  that  Josie  Fifer  had  missed  of  beauty  and 
homage  and  success. 

The  play  ran  on,  and  on,  and  on.  Sarah  Haddon 
was  superstitious  about  the  black  gown.  She  refused 
to  give  it  up  for  a  new  one.  She  insisted  that  if  ever 
she  discarded  the  old  black  velvet  for  a  new  the  run 
of  the  play  would  stop.  She  assured  Hahn  that  its 
shabbiness  did  not  show  from  the  front.  She  clung 
to  it  with  that  childish  unreasonableness  that  is  so 
often  found  in  people  of  the  stage. 


CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST  25 

But  Josie  waited  patiently.  Dozens  of  costumes 
passed  through  her  hands.  She  saw  plays  come  and 
go.  Dresses  came  to  her  whose  lining  bore  the  mark 
of  world-famous  modistes.  She  hung  them  away, 
or  refurbished  them  if  necessary  with  disinterested 
conscientiousness.  Sometimes  her  caustic  comment, 
as  she  did  so,  would  have  startled  the  complacency  of 
the  erstwhile  wearers  of  the  garments.  Her  knowledge 
of  the  stage,  its  artifices,  its  pretence,  its  narrowness, 
its  shams,  was  widening  and  deepening.  No  critic 
in  bone-rimmed  glasses  and  evening  clothes  was  more 
scathingly  severe  than  she.  She  sewed  on  satin.  She 
mended  fine  lace.  She  polished  stage  jewels.  And 
waited.  She  knew  that  one  day  her  patience  would 
be  rewarded.  And  then,  at  last  came  the  familiar  voice 
over  the  phone:  "Hello,  Fifer!  McCabe  talking." 

"Well?" 

"  ' Splendour5  closes  Saturday.  Haddon  says  she 
won't  play  in  this  heat.  They're  taking  it  to  London 
in  the  autumn.  The  stuff '11  be  up  Monday,  early." 

Josie  Fifer  turned  away  from  the  telephone  with 
a  face  so  radiant  that  one  of  her  sewing  women,  looking 
up,  was  moved  to  comment. 

"Got  some  good  news,  Miss  Fifer?" 

"  ' Splendour'  closes  this  week." 

"Well,  my  land!  To  look  at  you  a  person  would 
think  you'd  been  losing  money  at  the  box  office  every 
night  it  ran." 

The  look  was  still  on  her  face  when  Monday  morning 


26  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

came.  She  was  sewing  on  a  dress  just  discarded  by 
Adelaide  French,  the  tragedienne.  Adelaide's  maid 
was  said  to  be  the  hardest-worked  woman  in  the  pro- 
fession. When  French  finished  with  a  costume  it  was 
useless  as  a  dress;  but  it  was  something  historic, 
like  a  torn  and  tattered  battle  flag — an  emblem. 

McCabe,  box  under  his  arm,  stood  in  the  doorway. 
Josie  Fifer  stood  up  so  suddenly  that  the  dress  on  her 
lap  fell  to  the  floor.  She  stepped  over  it  heedlessly, 
and  went  toward  McCabe,  her  eyes  on  the  pasteboard 
box.  Behind  McCabe  stood  two  more  men,  likewise 
box-laden. 

"Put  them  down  here,"  said  Josie.  The  men 
thumped  the  boxes  down  on  the  long  table.  Josie's 
fingers  were  already  at  the  strings.  She  opened  the 
first  box,  emptied  its  contents,  tossed  them  aside, 
passed  on  to  the  second.  Her  hands  busied  themselves 
among  the  silks  and  broadcloth  of  this;  then  on  to 
the  third  and  last  box.  McCabe  and  his  men,  with 
scenery  and  furniture  still  to  unload  and  store,  turned 
to  go.  Their  footsteps  echoed  hollowly  as  they  clattered 
down  the  worn  old  stairway.  Josie  snapped  the  cord 
that  bound  the  third  box.  Her  cheeks  were  flushed, 
her  eyes  bright.  She  turned  it  upside  down.  Then  she 
pawed  it  over.  Then  she  went  back  to  the  contents 
of  the  first  two  boxes,  clawing  about  among  the  limp 
garments  with  which  the  table  was  strewn.  She  was 
breathing  quickly.  Suddenly:  "It  isn't  here!"  she 
cried.  "It  isn't  here!"  She  turned  and  flew  to  the 


CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST  27 

stairway.    The  voices  of  the  men  came  up  to  her.    She 
leaned  far  over  the  railing.     "McCabe!    McCabe!" 

"  Yeh?    What  do  you  want?" 

"The  black  velvet  dress!  The  black  velvet  dress! 
It  isn't  there." 

"Oh,  yeh.  That's  all  right.  Haddon,  she's  got  a 
bug  about  that  dress,  and  she  says  she  wants  to  take 
it  to  London  with  her,  to  use  on  the  opening  night. 
She  says  if  she  wears  a  new  one  that  first  night,  the 
play'll  be  a  failure.  Some  temperament,  that  girl, 
since  she's  got  to  be  a  star!" 

Josie  stood  clutching  the  railing  of  the;  stairway. 
Her  disappointment  was  so  bitter  that  she  could  not 
weep.  She  felt  cheated,  outraged.  She  was  frightened 
at  the  intensity  of  her  own  sensations.  "She  might 
have  let  me  have  it,"  she  said  aloud  in  the  dim  half 
light  of  the  hallway.  "She's  got  everything  else  in  the 
world.  She  might  have  let  me  have  that." 

Then  she  went  back  into  the  big,  bright  sewing  room. 
"Splendour"  ran  three  years  in  London. 

During  those  three  years  she  saw  Sid  Hahn  only 
three  or  four  times.  He  spent  much  of  his  time 
abroad.  Whenever  opportunity  presented  itself  she 
would  say:  "Is  'Splendour'  still  playing  in  London?" 

"Still  playing." 

The  last  time  Hahn,  intuitive  as  always,  had  eyed  her 
curiously.  "You  seem  to  be  interested  in  that  play." 

"Oh,  well,"  Josie  had  replied  with  assumed  caret 
lessness,  "it  being  in  Atlantic  City  just  when  I  had 


28  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

my  accident,  and  then  meeting  you  through  that, 
and  all,  why,  I  always  kind  of  felt  a  personal  interest 
in  it."  .  .  . 

At  the  end  of  three  years  Sarah  Haddon  returned 
to  New  York  with  an  English  accent,  a  slight  embon- 
point, and  a  little  foreign  habit  of  rushing  up  to  her  men 
friends  with  a  delighted  exclamation  (preferably 
French)  and  kissing  them  on  both  cheeks.  When 
Josie  Fifer,  happening  back  stage  at  a  rehearsal  of 
the  star's  new  play,  first  saw  her  do  this  a  grim  gleam 
came  into  her  eyes. 

"Bernhardt's  the  only  woman  who  can  spring  that 
and  get  away  with  it,"  she  said  to  her  assistant.  "  Had- 
don's  got  herself  sized  up  wrong.  I'll  gamble  her  next 
play  will  be  a  failure." 

And  it  was. 

The  scenery,  props,  and  costumes  of  the  London 
production  of  "Splendour"  were  slow  in  coming  back. 
But  finally  they  did  come.  Josie  received  them  with 
the  calmness  that  comes  of  hope  deferred.  It  had  been 
three  years  since  she  last  saw  the  play.  She  told 
herself,  chidingly,  that  she  had  been  sort  of  foolish 
over  that  play  and  this  costume.  Her  recent  glimpse 
of  Haddon  had  been  somewhat  disillusioning.  But  now, 
when  she  finally  held  the  gown  itself  in  her  hand — the 
original  "Splendour"  second-act  gown,  a  limp,  soft 
black  mass:  just  a  few  yards  of  worn  and  shabby 
velvet — she  found  her  hands  shaking.  Here  was  where 
she  had  hugged  the  toy  dog  to  her  breast.  Here 


CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST  29 

where  she  had  fallen  on  her  knees  to  pray  before  the 
little  shrine  in  her  hotel  room.  Every  worn  spot  had 
a  meaning  for  her.  Every  mark  told  a  story.  Her 
fingers  smoothed  it  tenderly. 

"Not  much  left  of  that,"  said  one  of  the  sewing  girls, 
glancing  up.  "I  guess  Sarah  would  have  a  hard  time 
making  the  hooks  and  eyes  meet  now.  They  say  she's 
come  home  from  London  looking  a  little  too  pros- 
perous." 

Josie  did  not  answer.  She  folded  the  dress  over  her 
arm  and  carried  it  to  the  wardrobe  room.  There  she 
hung  it  away  in  an  empty  closet,  quite  apart  from  the 
other  historic  treasures.  And  there  it  hung,  untouched, 
until  the  following  Sunday. 

On  Sunday  morning  East  Forty-third  Street 
bears  no  more  resemblance  to  the  week-day  Forty- 
third  than  does  a  stiffly  starched  and  subdued  Sab- 
bath-school scholar  to  his  Monday  morning  self. 
Strangely  quiet  it  is,  and  unfrequented.  Josie  Fifer, 
scurrying  along  in  the  unwonted  stillness,  was  prompted 
to  throw  a  furtive  glance  over  her  shoulder  now  and 
then,  as  though  afraid  of  being  caught  at  some  criminal 
act.  She  ran  up  the  little  flight  of  steps  with  a  rush, 
unlocked  the  door  with  trembling  fingers,  and  let  her- 
self into  the  cool,  dank  gloom  of  the  storehouse  hall. 
The  metal  door  of  the  elevator  stared  inquiringly  after 
her.  She  fled  past  it  to  the  stairway.  Every  step  of 
that  ancient  structure  squeaked  and  groaned.  First 
floor,  second,  third,  fourth.  The  everyday  hum  of 


30  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

the  sewing  machines  was  absent.  The  room  seemed 
to  be  holding  its  breath.  Josie  fancied  that  the  very 
garments  on  the  worktables  lifted  themselves  in- 
quiringly from  their  supine  position  to  see  what  it  was 
that  disturbed  their  Sabbath  rest.  Josie,  a  tense,  wide- 
eyed,  frightened  little  figure,  stood  in  the  centre  of 
the  vast  room,  listening  to  she  knew  not  what.  Then, 
relaxing,  she  gave  a  nervous  little  laugh  and,  reaching 
up,  unpinned  her  hat.  She  threw  it  on  a  near-by 
table  and  disappeared  into  the  wardrobe  room  beyond. 

Minutes  passed — an  hour.  She  did  not  come  back. 
From  the  room  beyond  came  strange  sounds — a  wom- 
an's voice;  the  thrill  of  a  song;  cries;  the  anguish 
of  tears;  laughter,  harsh  and  high,  as  a  desperate 
and  deceived  woman  laughs — all  this  following  in 
such  rapid  succession  that  Sid  Hahn,  puffing  laboriously 
up  the  four  flights  of  stairs  leading  to  the  wardrobe 
floor,  entered  the  main  room  unheard.  Unknown  to 
any  one,  he  was  indulging  in  one  of  his  unsuspected 
visits  to  the  old  wareroom  that  housed  the  evidence 
of  past  and  gone  successes — successes  that  had  brought 
him  fortune  and  fame,  but  little  real  happiness,  perhaps. 
No  one  knew  that  he  loved  to  browse  among  these 
pathetic  rags  of  a  forgotten  triumph.  No  one  would 
have  dreamed  that  this  chubby  little  man  could  glow 
and  weep  over  the  cast-off  garment  of  a  famous  Cyrano, 
or  the  faded  finery  of  a  Zaza. 

At  the  doorway  he  paused  now,  startled.  He  was 
listening  with  every  nerve  of  his  taut  body.  What? 


CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST  31 

Who?  He  tiptoed  across  the  room  with  a  step  in- 
credibly light  for  one  so  stout,  peered  cautiously  around 
the  side  of  the  doorway,  and  leaned  up  against  it  weakly. 
Josie  Fifer,  in  the  black  velvet  and  mock  pearls  of 
"  Splendour,"  with  her  grey-streaked  blonde  hair 
hidden  under  the  romantic  scallops  of  a  black  wig, 
was  giving  the  big  scene  from  the  third  act.  And  though 
it  sounded  like  a  burlesque  of  that  famous  passage, 
and  though  she  limped  more  than  ever  as  she  reeled 
to  an  imaginary  shrine  in  the  corner,  and  though  the 
black  wig  was  slightly  askew  by  now,  and  the  black 
velvet  hung  with  bunchy  awkwardness  about  her  skinny 
little  body,  there  was  nothing  of  mirth  in  Sid  Hahn's 
face  as  he  gazed.  He  shrank  back  now. 

She  was  coming  to  the  big  speech  at  the  close  of  the 
act — the  big  renunciation  speech  that  was  the  curtain. 
Sid  Hahn  turned  and  tiptoed  painfully,  breathlessly, 
magnificently,  out  of  the  big  front  room,  into  the 
hallway,  down  the  creaking  stairs,  and  so  to  the  sun- 
shine of  Forty-third  Street,  with  its  unaccustomed 
Sunday-morning  quiet.  And  he  was  smiling  that  rare 
and  melting  smile  of  his — the  smile  that  was  said  to 
make  him  look  something  like  a  kewpie,  and  some- 
thing like  a  cupid,  and  a  bit  like  an  imp,  and  very 
much  like  an  angel.  There  was  little  of  the  first  three 
in  it  now,  and  very  much  of  the  last.  And  so  he  got 
heavily  into  his  very  grand  motor  car  and  drove  off. 

"Why,  the  poor  little  kid,"  said  he— "the  poor, 
lonely,  stifled  little  crippled-up  kid." 


32  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

"I  beg  your  pardon,  sir?"  inquired  his  chauffeur. 

"Speak  when  you're  spoken  to,"  snapped  Sid  Hahn, 

And  here  it  must  be  revealed  to  you  that  Sid 
Hahn  did  not  marry  the  Cinderella  of  the  storage 
warehouse.  He  did  not  marry  anybody,  and  neither 
did  Josie.  And  yet  there  is  a  bit  more  to  this  story — ten 
years  more,  if  you  must  know — ten  years,  the  end  of 
which  found  Josie  a  sparse,  spectacled,  and  agile  little 
cripple,  as  alert  and  caustic  as  ever.  It  found  Sid 
Hahn  the  most  famous  theatrical  man  of  his  day. 
It  found  Sarah  Haddon  at  the  fag-end  of  a  career 
that  had  blazed  with  triumph  and  adulation.  She  had 
never  had  a  success  like  "Splendour."  Indeed,  there 
were  those  who  said  that  all  the  plays  that  followed 
had  been  failures,  carried  to  semi-success  on  the 
strength  of  that  play's  glorious  past.  She  eschewed 
low-cut  gowns  now.  She  knew  that  it  is  the  telltale 
throat  which  first  shows  the  marks  of  age.  She  knew, 
too,  why  Bernhardt,  in  "  Camille,"  always  died  in  a  high- 
necked  nightgown.  She  took  to  wearing  high,  ruffled 
things  about  her  throat,  and  softening,  kindly  chiffons. 

And  then,  hi  a  mistaken  moment,  they  planned  a 
revival  of  "Splendour."  Sarah  Haddon  would  again 
play  the  part  that  had  become  a  classic.  Fathers  had 
told  their  children  of  it — of  her  beauty,  her  golden 
voice,  the  exquisite  grace  of  her,  the  charm,  the  tender- 
ness, the  pathos.  And  they  told  them  of  the  famous 
black  velvet  dress,  and  how  in  it  she  had  moved  like 
a  splendid,  buoyant  bird. 


CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST  33 

So  they  revived  "  Splendour."  And  men  and  women 
brought  their  sons  and  daughters  to  see.  And  what 
they  saw  was  a  stout,  middle-aged  woman  in  a  too- 
tight  black  velvet  dress  that  made  her  look  like  a 
dowager.  And  when  this  woman  flopped  down  on  her 
knees  in  the  big  scene  at  the  close  of  the  last  act  she 
had  a  rather  dreadful  time  of  it  getting  up  again.  And 
the  audience,  resentful,  bewildered,  cheated  of  a 
precious  memory,  laughed.  That  laugh  sealed  the 
career  of  Sarah  Haddon.  It  is  a  fickle  thing,  this  public 
that  wants  to  be  amused;  fickle  and  cruel  and — 
paradoxically  enough — true  to  its  superstitions.  The 
Sarah  Haddon  of  eighteen  years  ago  was  one  of  these. 
They  would  have  none  of  this  fat,  puffy,  ample- 
bosomed  woman  who  was  trying  to  blot  her  picture 
from  their  memory.  "Away  with  her!"  cried  the 
critics  through  the  columns  of  next  morning's  paper. 
And  Sarah  Haddon's  day  was  done. 

"It's  because  I  didn't  wear  the  original  black  velvet 
dress!"  cried  she,  with  the  unreasoning  rage  for  which 
she  had  always  been  famous.  "If  I  had  worn  it,  every- 
thing would  have  been  different.  That  dress  had  a 
good-luck  charm.  Where  is  it?  I  want  it.  I  don't 
care  if  they  do  take  off  the  play.  I  want  it.  I  want  it." 

"Why,  child,"  Sid  Hahn  said  soothingly,  "that 
dress  has  probably  fallen  into  dust  by  this  time." 

"Dust!  What  do  you  mean?  How  old  do  you  think 
I  am?  That  you  should  say  that  to  me!  I've  made 
millions  for  you,  and  now " 


34  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

"Now,  now,  Sally,  be  a  good  girl.  That's  all  rot 
about  that  dress  being  lucky.  You've  grown  out  of 
this  part;  that's  all.  We'll  find  another  play " 

"I  want  that  dress." 

Sid  Hahn  flushed  uncomfortably.  "Well,  if  you 
must  know,  I  gave  it  away." 

"To  whom?" 

"To — to  Josie  Fifer.  She  took  a  notion  to  it,  and 
so  I  told  her  she  could  have  it."  Then,  as  Sarah 
Haddon  rose,  dried  her  eyes,  and  began  to  straighten 
her  hat:  "Where  are  you  going?"  He  trailed  her  to 
the  door  worriedly.  "Now,  Sally,  don't  do  anything 
foolish.  You're  just  tired  and  overstrung.  Where  are 
you— 

"I  am  going  to  see  Josie  Fifer." 

"Now,  look  here,  Sarah!" 

But  she  was  off,  and  Sid  Hahn  could  only  follow 
after,  the  showman  in  him  anticipating  the  scene  that 
was  to  follow.  When  he  reached  the  fourth  floor 
of  the  storehouse  Sarah  Haddon  was  there  ahead  cf 
him.  The  two  women — one  tall,  imperious,  magr.il 
cent  in  furs;  the  other  shrunken,  deformed,  shabby — 
stood  staring  at  each  other  from  opposites  sides  of  the 
worktable.  And  between  them,  in  a  crumpled,  grey- 
black  heap,  lay  the  velvet  gown. 

*'I  don't  care  who  says  you  can  have  it,"  Josie 
Fifer's  shrill  voice  was  saying.  "It's  mine,  and  I'm 
going  to  keep  it.  Mr.  Hahn  himself  gave  it  to  me. 
He  said  I  could  cut  it  up  for  a  dress  or  something  if 


CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST  35 

I  wanted  to.  Long  ago."  Then,  as  Sid  Hahn  himself 
appeared,  she  appealed  to  him.  "  There  he  is  now. 
Didn't  you,  Mr.  Hahn?  Didn't  you  say  I  could  have 
it?  Years  ago?" 

"Yes,  Jo,"  said  Sid  Hahn.  "It's  yours,  to  do  with 
as  you  wish." 

Sarah  Haddon,  who  never  had  been  denied  anything 
in  all  her  pampered  life,  turned  to  him  now.  Her 
bosom  rose  and  fell.  She  was  breathing  sharply. 
"But  S.  H.!"  she  cried,  "S.  H.,  I've  got  to  have  it. 
Don't  you  see,  I  want  it!  It's  all  I've  got  left  in  the 
world  of  what  I  used  to  be.  I  want  it!"  She  began  to 
cry,  and  it  was  not  acting. 

Josie  Fifer  stood  staring  at  her,  her  eyes  wide  with 
horror  and  unbelief. 

"Why,  say,  listen!  Listen!  You  can  have  it.  I 
didn't  know  you  wanted  it  as  bad  as  that.  Why,  you 
can  have  it.  I  want  you  to  take  it.  Here." 

She  shoved  it  across  the  table.  Sarah  reached  out 
for  it  quickly.  She  rolled  it  up  in  a  tight  bundle  and 
whisked  off  with  it  without  a  backward  glance  at 
Josie  or  at  Hahn.  She  was  still  sobbing  as  she  went 
down  the  stairs. 

The  two  stood  staring  at  each  other  ludicrously. 
Hahn  spoke  first. 

"I'm  sorry,  Josie.  That  was  nice  of  you,  giving 
it  to  her  like  that." 

But  Josie  did  not  seem  to  hear.  At  least  she  paid  no 
attention  to  his  remark.  She  was  staring  at  him  with 


36  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

that  dazed  and  wide-eyed  look  of  one  upon  whom  a 
great  truth  has  just  dawned.  Then,  suddenly,  she 
began  to  laugh.  She  laughed  a  high,  shrill  laugh 
that  was  not  so  much  an  expression  of  mirth  as  of  relief. 

Sid  Hahn  put  up  a  pudgy  hand  in  protest.  "Josie! 
Please!  For  the  love  of  Heaven  don't  you  go  and 
get  it.  I've  had  to  do  with  one  hysterical  woman 
to-day.  Stop  that  laughing!  Stop  it!" 

Josie  stopped,  not  abruptly,  but  in  a  little  series  of 
recurring  giggles.  Then  these  subsided  and  she  was 
smiling.  It  wasn't  at  all  her  usual  smile.  The  bitter- 
ness was  quite  gone  from  it.  She  faced  Sid  Hahn  across 
the  table.  Her  palms  were  outspread,  as  one  who 
would  make  things  plain.  "I  wasn't  hysterical.  I 
tvas  just  laughing.  I've  been  about  seventeen  years 
earning  that  laugh.  Don't  grudge  it  to  me." 

"Let's  have  the  plot,"  said  Hahn. 

"  There  isn't  any.  You  see,  it's  just — well,  I've 
just  discovered  how  it  works  out.  After  all  these  years! 
She's  had  everything  she  wanted  all  her  life.  And  me, 
I've  never  had  anything.  Not  a  thing.  She's  travelled 
one  way,  and  I've  travelled  hi  the  opposite  direction, 
and  where  has  it  brought  us?  Here  we  are,  both 
fighting  over  an  old  black  velvet  rag.  Don't  you  see? 

Both  wanting  the  same "  She  broke  off,  with  the 

little  twisted  smile  on  her  lips  again.  "Life's  a  strange 
thing,  Mr.  Hahn." 

"I  hope,  Josie,  you  don't  claim  any  originality  for 
that  remark,"  replied  Sid  Hahn  dryly. 


CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST  37 

"But,"  argued  the  editor,  "you  don't  call  this  a 
cheerful  story,  I  hope." 

"Well,  perhaps  not  exactly  boisterous.  But  it 
teaches  a  lesson,  and  all  that.  And  it's  sort  of  philo- 
sophical and  everything,  don't  you  think?" 

The  editor  shuffled  the  sheets  together  decisively, 
so  that  they  formed  a  neat  sheaf.  "I'm  afraid  I  didn't 
make  myself  quite  clear.  It's  entertaining,  and  all 
that,  but — ah — in  view  of  our  present  needs,  I'm 
sorry  to  say  we -" 


n 

THE    GAY    OLD    DOG 

THOSE  of  you  who  have  dwelt — or  even  lingered— 
in  Chicago,  Illinois  (this  is  not  a  humorous 
story),  are  familiar  with  the  region  known  as  the 
Loop.  For  those  others  of  you  to  whom  Chicago  is 
a  transfer  point  between  New  York  and  San  Fran- 
cisco there  is  presented  this  brief  explanation: 

The  Loop  is  a  clamorous,  smoke-infested  district 
embraced  by  the  iron  arms  of  the  elevated  tracks. 
In  a  city  boasting  fewer  millions,  it  would  be  known 
familiarly  as  downtown.  From  Congress  to  Lake 
Street,  from  Wabash  almost  to  the  river,  those  thunder- 
ous tracks  make  a  complete  circle,  or  loop.  Within  it 
lie  the  retail  shops,  the  commercial  hotels,  the  theatres, 
the  restaurants.  It  is  the  Fifth  Avenue  (diluted) 
and  the  Broadway  (deleted)  of  Chicago.  And  he 
who  frequents  it  by  night  in  search  of  amusement 
and  cheer  is  known,  vulgarly,  as  a  Loop-hound. 

Jo  Hertz  was  a  Loop-hound.  On  the  occasion 
of  those  sparse  first  nights  granted  the  metropolis 
of  the  Middle  West  he  was  always  present,  third 
row,  aisle,  left.  When  a  new  loop  cafe  was  opened 
Jo's  table  always  commanded  an  unobstructed  view 

38 


THE  GAY  OLD  DOG  39 

of  anything  worth  viewing.  On  entering  he  was 
wont  to  say,  "  Hello,  Gus,"  with  careless  cordiality 
to  the  head  waiter,  the  while  his  eye  roved  expertly 
from  table  to  table  as  he  removed  his  gloves.  He 
ordered  things  under  glass,  so  that  his  table,  at  mid- 
night or  thereabouts,  resembled  a  hot-bed  that  favours 
the  bell  system.  The  waiters  fought  for  him.  He 
was  the  kind  of  man  who  mixes  his  own  salad  dressing. 
He  liked  to  call  for  a  bowl,  some  cracked  ice,  lemon, 
garlic,  paprika,  salt,  pepper,  vinegar,  and  oil  and 
make  a  rite  of  it.  People  at  near-by  tables  would 
lay  down  their  knives  and  forks  to  watch,  fascinated. 
The  secret  of  it  seemed  to  lie  in  using  all  the  oil  in 
sight  and  calling  for  more. 

That  was  Jo — a  plump  and  lonely  bachelor  of 
fifty.  A  plethoric,  roving-eyed  and  kindly  man,  clutch- 
ing vainly  at  the  garments  of  a  youth  that  had  long 
slipped  past  him.  Jo  Hertz,  in  one  of  those  pinch-waist 
belted  suits  and  a  trench  coat  and  a  little  green  hat, 
walking  up  Michigan  Avenue  of  a  bright  winter's 
afternoon,  trying  to  take  the  curb  with  a  jaunty 
youthfulness  against  which  every  one  of  his  fat- 
encased  muscles  rebelled,  was  a  sight  for  mirth  or 
pity,  depending  on  one's  vision. 

The  gay-dog  business  was  a  late  phase  in  the  life 
of  Jo  Hertz.  He  had  been  a  quite  different  sort  of 
canine.  The  staid  and  harassed  brother  of  three 
unwed  and  selfish  sisters  is  an  under  dog.  The  tale 
of  how  Jo  Hertz  came  to  be  a  Loop-hound  should 


40  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

not  be  compressed  within  the  limits  of  a  short  story. 
It  should  be  told  as  are  the  photo  plays,  with  fre- 
quent throwbacks  and  many  cut-ins.  To  condense 
twenty-three  years  of  a  man's  life  into  some  five 
or  six  thousand  words  requires  a  verbal  economy 
amounting  to  parsimony. 

At  twenty-seven  Jo  had  been  the  dutiful,  hard- 
working son  (in  the  wholesale  harness  business)  of 
a  widowed  and  gummidging  mother,  who  called 
him  Joey.  If  you  had  looked  close  you  would  have 
seen  that  now  and  then  a  double  wrinkle  would  appear 
between  Jo's  eyes — a  wrinkle  that  had  no  business 
there  at  twenty-seven.  Then  Jo's  mother  died,  leaving 
him  handicapped  by  a  death-bed  promise,  the  three 
sisters  and  a  three-story-and-basement  house  on  Calu- 
met Avenue.  Jo's  wrinkle  became  a  fixture. 

Death-bed  promises  should  be  broken  as  lightly 
as  they  are  seriously  made.  The  dead  have  no  right 
to  lay  their  clammy  fingers  upon  the  living. 

"Joey,"  she  had  said,  in  her  high,  thin  voice,  "take 
care  of  the  girls." 

"I  will,  Ma,"  Jo  had  choked. 

"Joey,"  and  the  voice  was  weaker,  "promise  me 
you  won't  marry  till  the  girls  are  all  provided  for." 
Then  as  Joe  had  hesitated,  appalled:  "Joey,  it's 
my  dying  wish.  Promise!" 

"I  promise,   Ma,"   he  had  said. 

Whereupon  his  mother  had  died,  comfortably, 
leaving  him  with  a  completely  ruined  life. 


THE  GAY  OLD  DOG  41 

They  were  not  bad-looking  girls,  and  they  had 
a  certain  style,  too.  That  is,  Stell  and  Eva  had. 
Carrie,  the  middle  one,  taught  school  over  on  the 
West  Side.  In  those  days  it  took  her  almost  two 
hours  each  way.  She  said  the  kind  of  costume  she 
required  should  have  been  corrugated  steel.  But 
all  three  knew  what  was  being  worn,  and  they  wore 
it — or  fairly  faithful  copies  of  it.  Eva,  the  house- 
keeping sister,  had  a  needle  knack.  She  could  skim 
the  State  Street  windows  and  come  away  with  a 
mental  photograph  of  every  separate  tuck,  hem, 
yoke,  and  ribbon.  Heads  of  departments  showed 
her  the  things  they  kept  in  drawers,  and  she  went 
home  and  reproduced  them  with  the  aid  of  a  two- 
dollar-a-day  seamstress.  Stell,  the  youngest,  was 
the  beauty.  They  called  her  Babe.  She  wasn't 
really  a  beauty,  but  some  one  had  once  told  her  that 
she  looked  like  Janice  Meredith  (it  was  when  that 
work  of  fiction  was  at  the  height  of  its  popularity). 
For  years  afterward,  whenever  she  went  to  parties, 
she  affected  a  single,  fat  curl  over  her  right  shoulder, 
with  a  rose  stuck  through  it. 

Twenty-three  years  ago  one's  sisters  did  not  strain 
at  the  household  leash,  nor  crave  a  career.  Carrie 
taught  school,  and  hated  it.  Eva  kept  house  ex- 
pertly and  complainingly.  Babe's  profession  was 
being  the  family  beauty,  and  it  took  all  her  spare 
time.  Eva  always  let  her  sleep  until  ten. 

This  was  Jo's  household,  and  he  was  the  nominal 


42  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

head  of  it.  But  it  was  an  empty  title.  The  three 
women  dominated  his  life.  They  weren't  consciously 
selfish.  If  you  had  called  them  cruel  they  would 
have  put  you  down  as  mad.  When  you  are  the  lone 
brother  of  three  sisters,  it  means  that  you  must  con- 
stantly be  calling  for,  escorting,  or  dropping  one  of 
them  somewhere.  Most  men  of  Jo's  age  were  standing 
before  their  mirror  of  a  Saturday  night,  whistling 
blithely  and  abstractedly  while  they  discarded  a 
blue  polka-dot  for  a  maroon  tie,  whipped  off  the 
maroon  for  a  shot-silk,  and  at  the  last  moment  de- 
cided against  the  shot-silk  in  favor  of  a  plain  black- 
and-white,  because  she  had  once  said  she  preferred 
quiet  ties.  Jo,  when  he  should  have  been  preening 
his  feathers  for  conquest,  was  saying: 

"Well,  my  God,  I  am  hurrying!  Give  a  man  time, 
can' t  you?  I  just  got  home.  You  girls  have  been  laying 
around  the  house  all  day.  No  wonder  you're  ready." 

He  took  a  certain  pride  in  seeing  his  sisters  well 
dressed,  at  a  time  when  he  should  have  been  revel- 
ing in  fancy  waistcoats  and  brilliant-hued  socks, 
according  to  the  style  of  that  day,  and  the  inalien- 
able right  of  any  unwed  male  under  thirty,  in  any 
day.  On  those  rare  occasions  when  his  business 
necessitated  an  out-of-town  trip,  he  would  spend 
half  a  day  floundering  about  the  shops  selecting 
handkerchiefs,  or  stockings,  or  feathers,  or  fans,  or 
gloves  for  the  girls.  They  always  turned  out  to  be 
the  wrong  kind,  judging  by  their  reception. 


THE  GAY  OLD  DOG  43 

From  Carrie,  "What  in  the  world  do  I  want  of  a 
fan!" 

"I  thought  you  didn't  have  one,"  Jo  would  say. 

"I  haven't.    I  never  go  to  dances." 

Jo  would  pass  a  futile  hand  over  the  top  of  his 
head,  as  was  his  way  when  disturbed.  "I  just  thought 
you'd  like  one.  I  thought  every  girl  liked  a  fan. 
Just,"  feebly,  "just  to— to  have." 

"Oh,  for  pity's  sake!" 

And  from  Eva  or  Babe,  "I've  got  silk  stockings, 
Jo."  Or,  "You  brought  me  handkerchiefs  the  last 
time." 

There  was  something  selfish  in  his  giving,  as  there 
always  is  in  any  gift  freely  and  joyfully  made.  They 
never  suspected  the  exquisite  pleasure  it  gave  hire 
to  select  these  things;  these  fine,  soft,  silken  things. 
There  were  many  things  about  this  slow-going,  amiable 
brother  of  theirs  that  they  never  suspected.  If  you 
had  told  them  he  was  a  dreamer  of  dreams,  for  example, 
they  would  have  been  amused.  Sometimes,  dead- 
tired  by  nine  o'clock,  after  a  hard  day  down  town, 
he  would  doze  over  the  evening  paper.  At  intervals 
he  would  wake,  red-eyed,  to  a  snatch  of  conversation 
such  as,  "Yes,  but  if  you  get  a  blue  you  can  wear  it 
anywhere.  It's  dressy,  and  at  the  same  time  it's 
quiet,  too."  Eva,  the  expert,  wrestling  with  Carrie 
over  the  problem  of  the  new  spring  dress.  They 
never  guessed  that  the  commonplace  man  in  the  frayed 
old  smoking-jacket  had  banished  them  all  from  the 


44  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

room  long  ago;  had  banished  himself,  for  that  mat- 
ter. In  his  place  was  a  tall,  debonair,  and  rather 
dangerously  handsome  man  to  whom  six  o'clock 
spelled  evening  clothes.  The  kind  of  man  who  can 
lean  up  against  a  mantel,  or  propose  a  toast,  or  give 
an  order  to  a  man-servant,  or  whisper  a  gallant  speech 
in  a  lady's  ear  with  equal  ease.  The  shabby  old 
house  on  Calumet  Avenue  was  transformed  into  a 
brocaded  and  chandeliered  rendezvous  for  the  brilliance 
of  the  city.  Beauty  was  here,  and  wit.  But  none 
so  beautiful  and  witty  as  She.  Mrs. — er — Jo  Hertz. 
There  was  wine,  of  course;  but  no  vulgar  display. 
There  was  music;  the  soft  sheen  of  satin;  laughter. 
And  he  the  gracious,  tactful  host,  king  of  his  own 
domain 

"Jo,  for  heaven's  sake,  if  you're  going  to  snore 
go  to  bed!" 

"Why— did  I  fall  asleep?" 

"You  haven't  been  doing  anything  else  all  eve- 
ning. A  person  would  think  you  were  fifty  instead 
of  thirty." 

And  Jo  Hertz  was  again  just  the  dull,  grey,  com- 
monplace brother  of  three  well-meaning  sisters. 

Babe  used  to  say  petulantly,  "Jo,  why  don't  you 
ever  bring  home  any  of  your  men  friends?  A  girl 
might  as  well  not  have  any  brother,  all  the  good 
you  do." 

Jo,  conscience-stricken,  did  his  best  to  make  amends. 
But  a  man  who  has  been  petticoat-ridden  for  year* 


THE  GAY  OLD  DOG  45 

loses  the  knack,  somehow,  of  comradeship  with  men. 
He  acquires,  too,  a  knowledge  of  women,  and  a  dis- 
taste for  them,  equalled  only,  perhaps,  by  that  of  an 
elevator-starter  in  a  department  store. 

Which  brings  us  to  one  Sunday  in  May.  Jo  came 
home  from  a  late  Sunday  afternoon  walk  to  find 
company  for  supper.  Carrie  often  had  in  one  of 
her  school-teacher  friends,  or  Babe  one  of  her  friv- 
olous intimates,  or  even  Eva  a  staid  guest  of  the 
old-girl  type.  There  was  always  a  Sunday  night 
supper  of  potato  salad,  and  cold  meat,  and  coffee, 
and  perhaps  a  fresh  cake.  Jo  rather  enjoyed  it, 
being  a  hospitable  soul.  But  he  regarded  the  guests 
with  the  undazzled  eyes  of  a  man  to  whom  they 
were  just  so  many  petticoats,  timid  of  the  night 
streets  and  requiring  escort  home.  If  you  had  sug- 
gested to  him  that  some  of  his  sisters'  popularity 
was  due  to  his  own  presence,  or  if  you  had  hinted 
that  the  more  kittenish  of  these  visitors  were  prob- 
ably making  eyes  at  him,  he  would  have  stared  in 
amazement  and  unbelief. 

This  Sunday  night  it  turned  out  to  be  one  of  Car- 
rie's friends. 

"Emily,"  said  Carrie,  "this  is  my  brother,  Jo." 

Jo  had  learned  what  to  expect  in  Carrie's  friends. 
Drab-looking  women  in  the  late  thirties,  whose  facial 
lines  all  slanted  downward. 

"Happy  to  meet  you,"  said  Jo,  and  looked  down 
at  a  different  sort  altogether.  A  most  surprisingly 


46  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

different  sort,  for  one  of  Carrie's  friends.  This  Emily 
person  was  very  small,  and  fluffy,  and  blue-eyed,  and 
sort  of — well,  crinkly  looking.  You  know.  The  cor- 
ners of  her  mouth  when  she  smiled,  and  her  eyes 
when  she  looked  up  at  you,  and  her  hair,  which  was 
brown,  but  had  the  miraculous  effect,  somehow,  of 
being  golden. 

Jo  shook  hands  with  her.  Her  hand  was  incredi- 
bly small,  and  soft,  so  that  you  were  afraid  of  crush- 
ing it,  until  you  discovered  she  had  a  firm  little  grip 
all  her  own.  It  surprised  and  amused  you,  that  grip, 
as  does  a  baby's  unexpected  clutch  on  your  patronising 
forefinger.  As  Jo  felt  it  in  his  own  big  clasp,  the 
strangest  thing  happened  to  him.  Something  inside 
Jo  Hertz  stopped  working  for  a  moment,  then  lurched 
sickeningly,  then  thumped  like  mad.  It  was  his 
heart.  He  stood  staring  down  at  her,  and  she  up  at 
him,  until  the  others  laughed.  Then  their  hands 
fell  apart,  lingeringly. 

"Are  you  a  school-teacher,  Emily?"  he  said. 

"Kindergarten.  It's  my  first  year.  And  don't 
call  me  Emily,  please." 

"Why  not?  It's  your  name.  I  think  it's  the 
prettiest  name  in  the  world."  Which  he  hadn't 
meant  to  say  at  all.  In  fact,  he  was  perfectly  aghast 
to  find  himself  saying  it.  But  he  meant  it. 

At  supper  he  passed  her  things,  and  stared,  until 
everybody  laughed  again,  and  Eva  said  acidly,  "Why 
don't  you  feed  her?" 


THE  GAY  OLD  DOG  47 

it  wasn't  that  Emily  had  an  air  of  helplessness. 
She  just  made  you  feel  you  wanted  her  to  be  helpless, 
so  that  you  could  help  her. 

Jo  took  her  home,  and  from  that  Sunday  night 
he  began  to  strain  at  the  leash.  He  took  his  sisters 
out,  dutifully,  but  he  would  suggest,  with  a  care- 
lessness that  deceived  no  one,  "Don't  you  want  one 
of  your  girl  friends  to  come  along?  That  little  What's- 
her-name — Emily,  or  something.  So  long's  I've  got 
three  of  you,  I  might  as  well  have  a  full  squad." 

For  a  long  time  he  didn't  know  what  was  the  mat- 
ter with  him.  He  only  knew  he  was  miserable,  and 
yet  happy.  Sometimes  his  heart  seemed  to  ache 
with  an  actual  physical  ache.  He  realised  that  he 
wanted  to  do  things  for  Emily.  He  wanted  to  buy 
things  for  Emily — useless,  pretty,  expensive  things 
that  he  couldn't  afford.  He  wanted  to  buy  every- 
thing that  Emily  needed,  and  everything  that  Emily 
desired.  He  wanted  to  marry  Emily.  That  was  it. 
He  discovered  that  one  day,  with  a  shock,  in  the 
midst  of  a  transaction  in  the  harness  business.  He 
stared  at  the  man  with  whom  he  was  dealing  until 
that  startled  person  grew  uncomfortable. 

"What's   the  matter,   Hertz?" 

"Matter?" 

"You  look  as  if  you'd  seen  a  ghost  or  found  a  gold 
mine.  I  don't  know  which." 

"Gold  mine,"  said  Jo.    And  then,  "No.    Ghost." 

For  he  remembered  that  high,  thin  voice,  and  his 


48  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

promise.  And  the  harness  business  was  slithering 
downhill  with  dreadful  rapidity,  as  the  automobile 
business  began  its  amazing  climb.  Jo  tried  to  stop 
it.  But  he  was  not  that  kind  of  business  man.  It 
never  occurred  to  him  to  jump  out  of  the  down- 
going  vehicle  and  catch  the  up-going  one.  He  stayed 
on,  vainly  applying  brakes  that  refused  to  work. 

"You  know,  Emily,  I  couldn't  support  two  house- 
holds now.  Not  the  way  things  are.  But  if  you'll 
wait.  If  you'll  only  wait.  The  girls  might — that 
is,  Babe  and  Carrie- 
She  was  a  sensible  little  thing,  Emily.  "Of  course 
I'll  wait.  But  we  mustn't  just  sit  back  and  let  the 
years  go  by.  We've  got  to  help." 

She  went  about  it  as  if  she  were  already  a  little 
match-making  matron.  She  corralled  all  the  men 
she  had  ever  known  and  introduced  them  to  Babe, 
Carrie,  and  Eva  separately,  in  pairs,  and  en  masse. 
She  arranged  parties  at  which  Babe  could  display 
the  curl.  She  got  up  picnics.  She  stayed  home 
while  Jo  took  the  three  about.  When  she  was  pres- 
ent she  tried  to  look  as  plain  and  obscure  as  pos- 
sible, so  that  the  sisters  should  show  up  to  advan- 
tage. She  schemed,  and  planned,  and  contrived, 
and  hoped;  and  smiled  into  Jo's  despairing  eyes. 

And  three  years  went  by.  Three  precious  years. 
Carrie  still  taught  school,  and  hated  it.  Eva  kept 
house,  more  and  more  complainingly  as  prices  ad- 
vanced and  allowance  retreated.  Stell  was  still  BrV, 


THE  GAY  OLD  DOG  49 

the  family  beauty;  but  even  she  knew  that  the  time 
was  past  for  curls.  Emily's  hair,  somehow,  lost  its 
glint  and  began  to  look  just  plain  brown.  Her  crink- 
liness  began  to  iron  out. 

"Now,  look  here!"  Jo  argued,  desperately,  one 
night.  "  We  could  be  happy,  anyway.  There's  plenty 
of  room  at  the  house.  Lots  of  people  begin  that 
way.  Of  course,  I  couldn't  give  you  all  I'd  like  to, 
at  first.  But  maybe,  after  a  while " 

No  dreams  of  salons,  and  brocade,  and  velvet- 
footed  servitors,  and  satin  damask  now.  Just  two 
rooms,  all  their  own,  all  alone,  and  Emily  to  work 
for.  That  was  his  dream.  But  it  seemed  less  pos- 
sible than  that  other  absurd  one  had  been. 

You  know  that  Emily  was  as  practical  a  little 
thing  as  she  looked  fluffy.  She  knew  women.  Espe- 
cially did  she  know  Eva,  and  Carrie,  and  Babe.  She 
tried  to  imagine  herself  taking  the  household  af- 
fairs and  the  housekeeping  pocketbook  out  of  Eva's 
expert  hands.  Eva  had  once  displayed  to  her  a 
sheaf  of  aigrettes  she  had  bought  with  what  she  saved 
out  of  the  housekeeping  money.  So  then  she  tried 
to  picture  herself  allowing  the  reins  of  Jo's  house  to 
remain  in  Eva's  hands.  And  everything  feminine 
and  normal  in  her  rebelled.  Emily  knew  she'd  want 
to  put  away  her  own  freshly  laundered  linen,  and 
smooth  it,  and  pat  it.  She  was  that  kind  of  woman. 
She  knew  she'd  want  to  do  her  own  delightful  haggling 
with  butcher  and  vegetable  pedlar.  She  knew  she'd 


50  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

want  to  muss  Jo's  hair,  and  sit  on  his  knee,  and  even 
quarrel  with  him,  if  necessary,  without  the  awareness 
of  three  ever-present  pairs  of  maiden  eyes  and  ears. 

"No!  No!  We'd  only  be  miserable.  I  know. 
Even  if  they  didn't  object.  And  they  would,  Jo. 
Wouldn't  they?" 

His  silence  was  miserable  assent.  Then,  "But 
you  do  love  me,  don't  you,  Emily?" 

"I  do,  Jo.  I  love  you — and  love  you — and  love 
you.  But,  Jo,  I— can't." 

"I  know  it,  dear.  I  knew  it  all  the  time,  really. 
I  just  thought,  maybe,  somehow— 

The  two  sat  staring  for  a  moment  into  space,  their 
hands  clasped.  Then  they  both  shut  their  eyes, 
with  a  little  shudder,  as  though  what  they  saw  was 
terrible  to  look  upon.  Emily's  hand,  the  tiny  hand 
that  was  so  unexpectedly  firm,  tightened  its  hold 
v^'s,  and  his  crushed  the  absurd  fingers  until  she 
v.-L  1  with  pain. 

That  was  the  beginning  of  the  end,  and  they  knew  it. 

Emily  wasn't  the  kind  of  girl  who  would  be  left 
to  pine.  There  are  too  many  Jo's  in  the  world  whose 
hearts  are  prone  to  lurch  and  then  thump  at  the  feel 
of  a  soft,  fluttering,  incredibly  small  hand  in  their 
grip.  One  year  later  Emily  was  married  to  a  young 
man  whose  father  owned  a  large,  pie-shaped  slice 
of  the  prosperous  state  of  Michigan. 

That  being  safely  accomplished,  there  was  some- 
thing grimly  humorous  in  the  trend  taken  by  affairs 


THE  GAY  OLD  DOG  51 

in  the  old  house  on  Calumet.  For  Eva  married. 
Of  all  people,  Eva!  Married  well,  too,  though  he 
was  a  great  deal  older  than  she.  She  went  off  in 
a  hat  she  had  copied  from  a  French  model  at  Field's, 
and  a  suit  she  had  contrived  with  a  home  dressmaker, 
aided  by  pressing  on  the  part  of  the  little  tailor  in  the 
basement  over  on  Thirty-first  Street.  It  was  the 
last  of  that,  though.  The  next  time  they  saw  her, 
she  had  on  a  hat  that  even  she  would  have  despaired 
of  copying,  and  a  suit  that  sort  of  melted  into  your 
gaze.  She  moved  to  the  North  Side  (trust  Eva  for 
that),  and  Babe  assumed  the  management  of  the 
household  on  Calumet  Avenue.  It  was  rather  a 
pinched  little  household  now,  for  the  harness  business 
shrank  and  shrank. 

"I  don't  see  how  you  can  expect  me  to  keep  house 
decently  on  this!"  Babe  would  say  contemptuously. 
Babe's  nose,  always  a  little  inclined  to  sharpness,  had 
whittled  down  to  a  point  of  late.  "If  you  knew  what 
Ben  gives  Eva." 

"It's  the  best  I  can  do,  Sis.  Business  is  some- 
thing rotten." 

"Ben  says  if  you  had  the  least  bit  of "  Ben 

was  Eva's  husband,  and  quotable,  as  are  all  suc- 
cessful men. 

"I  don't  care  what  Ben  says,"  shouted  Jo,  goaded 
into  rage.  "I'm  sick  of  your  everlasting  Ben.  Go 
and  get  a  Ben  of  your  own,  why  don't  you,  if  you're 
so  stuck  on  the  way  he  does  things." 


52  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

And  Babe  did.  She  made  a  last  desperate  drive, 
aided  by  Eva,  and  she  captured  a  rather  surprised 
young  man  in  the  brokerage  way,  who  had  made 
up  his  mind  not  to  marry  for  years  and  years.  Eva 
wanted  to  give  her  her  wedding  things,  but  at  that 
Jo  broke  into  sudden  rebellion. 

"No  sir!  No  Ben  is  going  to  buy  my  sister's 
wedding  clothes,  understand?  I  guess  I'm  not  broke 
—yet.  I'll  furnish  the  money  for  her  things,  and 
there'll  be  enough  of  them,  too." 

Babe  had  as  useless  a  trousseau,  and  as  filled  with 
extravagant  pink-and-blue  and  lacy  and  frilly  things 
as  any  daughter  of  doting  parents.  Jo  seemed  to  find 
a  grim  pleasure  in  providing  them.  But  it  left  him 
pretty  well  pinched.  After  Babe's  marriage  (she 
insisted  that  they  call  her  Estelle  now)  Jo  sold  the 
house  on  Calumet.  He  and  Carrie  took  one  of  those 
little  flats  that  were  springing  up,  seemingly  over 
night,  all  through  Chicago's  South  Side. 

There  was  nothing  domestic  about  Carrie.  She 
had  given  up  teaching  two  years  before,  and  had 
gone  into  Social  Service  work  on  the  West  Side.  She 
had  what  is  known  as  a  legal  mind — hard,  clear, 
orderly — and  she  made  a  great  success  of  it.  Her 
dream  was  to  live  at  the  Settlement  House  and  give  all 
her  tune  to  the  work.  Upon  the  little  household  she 
bestowed  a  certain  amount  of  grim,  capable  attention. 
It  was  the  same  kind  of  attention  she  would  have 
given  a  piece  of  machinery  whose  oiling  and  running 


THE  GAY  OLD  DOG  53 

had  been  entrusted  to  her  care.  She  hated  it,  and 
didn't  hesitate  to  say  so. 

Jo  took  to  prowling  about  department  store  base- 
ments, and  household  goods  sections.  He  was  al- 
ways sending  home  a  bargain  in  a  ham,  or  a  sack 
of  potatoes,  or  fifty  pounds  of  sugar,  or  a  window 
clamp,  or  a  new  kind  of  paring  knife.  He  was  forever 
doing  odd  little  jobs  that  the  janitor  should  have 
done.  It  was  the  domestic  in  him  claiming  its 
own. 

Then,  one  night,  Carrie  came  home  with  a  dull 
glow  in  her  leathery  cheeks,  and  her  eyes  alight  with 
resolve.  They  had  what  she  called  a  plain  talk. 

"Listen,  Jo.  They've  offered  me  the  job  of  first 
assistant  resident  worker.  And  I'm  going  to  take 
it.  Take  it!  I  know  fifty  other  girls  who'd  give 
their  ears  for  it.  I  go  in  next  month." 

They  were  at  dinner.  Jo  looked  up  from  his  plate, 
dully.  Then  he  glanced  around  the  little  dining 
room,  with  its  ugly  tan  walls  and  its  heavy,  dark 
furniture  (the  Calumet  Avenue  pieces  fitted  cumber- 
somely  into  the  five-room  flat). 

"Away?  Away  from  here,  you  mean — to  live?" 
Carrie  laid  down  her  fork.  "Well,  really,  Jo!  After 
all  that  explanation." 

"But  to  go  over  there  to  live!  Why,  that  neigh- 
bourhood's full  of  dirt,  and  disease,  and  crime,  and 
the  Lord  knows  what  all.  I  can't  let  you  do  that, 
Carrie." 


54  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

Carrie's  chin  came  up.  She  laughed  a  short  little 
laugh.  "Let  me!  That's  eighteenth-century  talk, 
Jo.  My  life's  my  own  to  live.  I'm  going." 

And  she  went. 

Jo  stayed  on  in  the  apartment  until  the  lease  was 
up.  Then  he  sold  what  furniture  he  could,  stored 
or  gave  away  the  rest,  and  took  a  room  on  Michigan 
Avenue  in  one  of  the  old  stone  mansions  whose  decayed 
splendour  was  being  put  to  such  purpose. 

Jo  Hertz  was  his  own  master.  Free  to  marry. 
Free  to  come  and  go.  And  he  found  he  didn't  even 
think  of  marrying.  He  didn't  even  want  to  come 
or  go,  particularly.  A  rather  frumpy  old  bachelor, 
with  thinning  hair  and  a  thickening  neck.  Much  has 
been  written  about  the  unwed,  middle-aged  woman; 
her  fussiness,  her  primness,  her  angularity  of  mind 
and  body.  In  the  male  that  same  fussiness  develops, 
and  a  certain  primness,  too.  But  he  grows  flabby 
where  she  grows  lean. 

Every  Thursday  evening  he  took  dinner  at  Eva's, 
and  on  Sunday  noon  at  Stell's.  He  tucked  his  napkin 
under  his  chin  and  openly  enjoyed  the  home-made 
soup  and  the  well-cooked  meats.  After  dinner  he  tried 
to  talk  business  with  Eva's  husband,  or  Stell's.  His 
business  talks  were  the  old-fashioned  kind,  beginning: 

"Well,  now,  looka  here.  Take,  f'rinstance  your 
raw  hides  and  leathers." 

But  Ben  and  George  didn't  want  to  "take,  f'rinstance, 
your  raw  hides  and  leathers."  They  wanted,  when  they 


THE  GAY  OLD  DOG  55 

took  anything  at  all,  to  take  golf,  or  politics  or  stocks. 
They  were  the  modern  type  of  business  man  who 
prefers  to  leave  his  work  out  of  his  play.  Business, 
with  them,  was  a  profession — a  finely  graded  and 
balanced  thing,  differing  from  Jo's  clumsy,  downhill 
style  as  completely  as  does  the  method  of  a  great 
criminal  detective  differ  from  that  of  a  village  constable. 
They  would  listen,  restively,  and  say,  "Uh-uh,"  at 
intervals,  and  at  the  first  chance  they  would  sort  of 
fade  out  of  the  room,  with  a  meaning  glance  at  their 
wives.  Eva  had  two  children  now.  Girls.  They 
treated  Uncle  Jo  with  good-natured  tolerance.  Stell 
had  no  children.  Uncle  Jo  degenerated,  by  almost 
imperceptible  degrees,  from  the  position  of  honoured 
guest,  who  is  served  with  white  meat,  to  that  of  one 
who  is  content  with  a  leg  and  one  of  those  obscure 
and  bony  sections  which,  after  much  turning  with  a 
bewildered  and  investigating  knife  and  fork,  leave 
one  baffled  and  unsatisfied. 

Eva  and  Stell  got  together  and  decided  that  Jo 
ought  to  marry. 

"It  isn't  natural,"  Eva  told  him.  "I  never  saw  a 
man  who  took  so  little  interest  in  women." 

"Me!"  protested  Jo,  almost  shyly.    "Women!" 

"Yes.  Of  course.  You  act  like  a  frightened  school- 
boy." 

So  they  had  in  for  dinner  certain  friends  and  acquaint- 
ances of  fitting  age.  They  spoke  of  them  as  "splendid 
girls."  Between  thirty-six  and  forty.  They  talked 


56  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

awfully  well,  in  a  firm,  clear  way,  about  civics,  and 
classes,  and  politics,  and  economics,  and  boards.  They 
rather  terrified  Jo.  He  didn't  understand  much  that 
they  talked  about,  and  he  felt  humbly  inferior,  and  yet 
a  little  resentful,  as  if  something  had  passed  him  by. 
He  escorted  them  home,  dutifully,  though  they  told 
him  not  to  bother,  and  they  evidently  meant  it.  They 
seemed  capable,  not  only  of  going  home  quite  unat- 
tended, but  of  delivering  a  pointed  lecture  to  any 
highwayman  or  brawler  who  might  molest  them. 

The  following  Thursday  Eva  would  say,  "How 
did  you  like  her,  Jo?" 

"Like  who?"  Jo  would  spar  feebly. 

"Miss  Matthews." 

"Who's  she?" 

"Now,  don't  be  funny,  Jo.  You  know  very  well 
I  mean  the  girl  who  was  here  for  dinner.  The  one  who 
talked  so  well  on  the  emigration  question. 

"Oh,  her!  Why,  I  liked  her  all  right.  Seems  to 
be  a  smart  woman." 

"Smart!    She's  a  perfectly  splendid  girl." 

"Sure,"  Jo  would  agree  cheerfully. 

"But  didn't  you  like  her?" 

"I  can't  say  I  did,  Eve.  And  I  can't  say  I  didn't. 
She  made  me  think  a  lot  of  a  teacher  I  had  in  the  fifth 
reader.  Name  of  Himes.  As  I  recall  her,  she  must 
have  been  a  fine  woman.  But  I  never  thought  of  her 
as  a  woman  at  all.  She  was  just  Teacher." 

"You  make  me  tired,"  snapped  Eva  impatiently. 


THE  GAY  OLD  DOG  57 

"A  man  of  your  age.  You  don't  expect  to  marry  a 
girl,  do  you?  A  child!" 

"I  don't  expect  to  marry  anybody,"  Jo  had  answered. 

And  that  was  the  truth,  lonely  though  he  often  was. 

The  following  spring  Eva  moved  to  Winnetka. 
Any  one  who  got  the  meaning  of  the  Loop  knows 
the  significance  of  a  move  to  a  north-shore  suburb, 
and  a  house.  Eva's  daughter,  Ethel,  was  growing  up, 
and  her  mother  had  an  eye  on  society. 

That  did  away  with  Jo's  Thursday  dinner.  Then 
StelPs  husband  bought  a  car.  They  went  out  into  the 
country  every  Sunday.  Stell  said  it  was  getting  so 
that  maids  objected  to  Sunday  dinners,  anyway. 
Besides,  they  were  unhealthy,  old-fashioned  things. 
They  always  meant  to  ask  Jo  to  come  along,  but  by 
the  time  their  friends  were  placed,  and  the  lunch,  and 
the  boxes,  and  sweaters,  and  George's  camera,  and 
everything,  there  seemed  to  be  no  room  for  a  man  of 
Jo's  bulk.  So  that  eliminated  the  Sunday  dinners. 

"Just  drop  in  any  time  during  the  week,"  Stell 
said,  "for  dinner.  Except  Wednesday — that's  our 
bridge  night — and  Saturday.  And,  of  course,  Thursday. 
Cook  is  out  that  night.  Don't  wait  for  me  to  phone." 

And  so  Jo  drifted  into  that  sad-eyed,  dyspeptic 
family  made  up  of  those  you  see  dining  in  second- 
rate  restaurants,  their  paper  propped  up  against  the 
bowl  of  oyster  crackers,  munching  solemnly  and 
with  indifference  to  the  stare  of  the  passer-by  surveying 
them  through  the  brazen  plate-glass  window. 


$8  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

And  then  came  the  War.  The  war  that  spelled 
death  and  destruction  to  millions.  The  war  that 
brought  a  fortune  to  Jo  Hertz,  and  transformed 
him,  over  night,  from  a  baggy-kneed  old  bachelor, 
whose  business  was  a  failure,  to  a  prosperous  manu- 
facturer whose  only  trouble  was  the  shortage  in  hides 
for  the  making  of  his  product — leather!  The  armies 
of  Europe  called  for  it.  Harnesses!  More  harnesses! 
Straps!  Millions  of  straps.  More!  More! 

The  musty  old  harness  business  over  on  Lake  Street 
was  magically  changed  from  a  dust-covered,  dead-alive 
concern  to  an  orderly  hive  that  hummed  and  glittered 
with  success.  Orders  poured  in.  Jo  Hertz  had  inside 
information  on  the  War.  He  knew  about  troops  and 
horses.  He  talked  with  French  and  English  and 
Italian  buyers — noblemen,  many  of  them — commis- 
sioned by  their  countries  to  get  American-made 
supplies.  And  now,  when  he  said  to  Ben  or  George, 
"Take  frinstance  your  raw  hides  and  leathers,"  they 
listened  with  respectful  attention. 

And  then  began  the  gay-dog  business  in  the  life 
of  Jo  Hertz.  He  developed  into  a  Loop-hound,  ever 
keen  on  the  scent  of  fresh  pleasure.  That  side  of 
Jo  Hertz  which  had  been  repressed  and  crushed  and 
ignored  began  to  bloom,  unhealthily.  At  first  he 
spent  money  on  his  rather  contemptuous  nieces.  He 
sent  them  gorgeous  fans,  and  watch  bracelets,  and 
velvet  bags.  He  took  two  expensive  rooms  at  a  down- 
town hotel,  and  there  was  something  more  tear-corn- 


THE  GAY  OLD  DOG  59 

pelling  than  grotesque  about  the  way  he  gloated  over 
the  luxury  of  a  separate  ice- water  tap  in  the  bathroom. 
He  explained  it. 

"Just  turn  it  on.  Ice- water!  Any  hour  of  the  day 
or  night." 

He  bought  a  car.  Naturally.  A  glittering  affair; 
in  colour  a  bright  blue,  with  pale  blue  leather  straps 
and  a  great  deal  of  gold  fittings,  and  wire  wheels. 
Eva  said  it  was  the  kind  of  thing  a  soubrette  would 
use,  rather  than  an  elderly  business  man.  You  saw 
him  driving  about  in  it,  red-faced  and  rather  awkward 
at  the  wheel.  You  saw  him,  too,  in  the  Pompeian 
room  at  the  Congress  Hotel  of  a  Saturday  afternoon 
when  doubtful  and  roving-eyed  matrons  in  kolinsky 
capes  are  wont  to  congregate  to  sip  pale  amber  drinks. 
Actors  grew  to  recognise  the  semi-bald  head  and  the 
shining,  round,  good-natured  face  looming  out  at  them 
from  the  dim  well  of  the  parquet,  and  sometimes,  in 
a  musical  show,  they  directed  a  quip  at  him,  and  he 
liked  it.  He  could  pick  out  the  critics  as  they  came 
down  the  aisle,  and  even  had  a  nodding. acquaintance 
with  two  of  them. 

" Kelly,  of  the  Herald"  he  would  say  carelessly. 
"Bean,  of  the  Trib.  They're  all  afraid  of  him." 

So  he  frolicked,  ponderously.  In  New  York  he  might 
have  been  called  a  Man  About  Town. 

And  he  was  lonesome.  He  was  very  lonesome. 
So  he  searched  about  in  his  mind  and  brought  from  the 
dim  past  the  memory  of  the  luxuriously  furnished 


60  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

establishment  of  which  he  used  to  dream  in  the  evenings 
when  he  dozed  over  his  paper  in  the  old  house  on 
Calumet.  So  he  rented  an  apartment,  many-roomed 
and  expensive,  with  a  man-servant  in  charge,  and  fur- 
nished it  in  styles  and  periods  ranging  through  all 
the  Louises.  The  living  room  was  mostly  rose  colour. 
It  was  like  an  unhealthy  and  bloated  boudoir.  And 
yet  there  was  nothing  sybaritic  or  uncleanly  in  the 
sight  of  this  paunchy,  middle-aged  man  sulking  into 
the  rosy-cushioned  luxury  of  his  ridiculous  home. 
It  was  a  frank  and  naive  indulgence  of  long-starved 
senses,  and  there  was  in  it  a  great  resemblance  to  the 
rolling  eyed  ecstasy  of  a  schoolboy  smacking  his  lips 
over  an  all-day  sucker. 

The  War  went  on,  and  on,  and  on.  And  the  money 
continued  to  roll  in — a  flood  of  it.  Then,  one  after- 
noon, Eva,  in  town  on  shopping  bent,  entered  a  small, 
exclusive,  and  expensive  shop  on  Michigan  Avenue. 
Exclusive,  that  is,  in  price.  Eva's  weakness,  you  may 
remember,  was  hats.  She  was  seeking  a  hat  now. 
She  described  what  she  sought  with  a  languid  con- 
ciseness, and  stood  looking  about  her  after  the  sales- 
woman had  vanished  hi  quest  of  it.  The  room  was 
becomingly  rose-illumined  and  somewhat  dim,  so 
that  some  minutes  had  passed  before  she  realised  that 
a  man  seated  on  a  raspberry  brocade  settee  not  five 
feet  away — a  man  with  a  walking  stick,  and  yellow 
gloves,  and  tan  spats,  and  a  check  suit — was  her 
brother  Jo.  From  him  Eva's  wild-eyed  glance  leaped 


THE  GAY  OLD  DOG  61 

to  the  woman  who  was  trying  on  hats  before  one  of 
the  many  long  mirrors.  She  was  seated,  and  a  sales- 
woman was  exclaiming  discreetly  at  her  elbow. 

Eva  turned  sharply  and  encountered  her  own  sales- 
woman returning,  hat-laden.  "Not  to-day/'  she 
gasped.  "I'm  feeling  ill.  Suddenly."  And  almost 
ran  from  the  room. 

That  evening  she  told  Stell,  relating  her  news  in 
that  telephone  pidgin-English  devised  by  every  family 
of  married  sisters  as  protection  against  the  neighbours 
and  Central.  Translated,  it  ran  thus: 

"He  looked  straight  at  me.  My  dear,  I  thought 
I'd  die !  But  at  least  he  had  sense  enough  not  to  speak. 
She  was  one  of  those  limp,  willowy  creatures  with  the 
greediest  eyes  that  she  tried  to  keep  softened  to  a  baby 
stare,  and  couldn't,  she  was  so  crazy  to  get  her  hands 
on  those  hats.  I  saw  it  all  in  one  awful  minute.  You 
know  the  way  I  do.  I  suppose  some  people  would 
call  her  pretty.  I  don't.  And  her  colour!  Well! 
And  the  most  expensive-looking  hats.  Aigrettes, 
and  paradise,  and  feathers.  Not  one  of  them  under 
seventy-five.  Isn't  it  disgusting !  At  his  age !  Suppose 
Ethel  had  been  with  me!" 

The  next  time  it  was  Stell  who  saw  them.  In  a 
restaurant.  She  said  it  spoiled  her  evening.  And  the 
third  time  it  was  Ethel.  She  was  one  of  the  guests 
at  a  theatre  party  given  by  Nicky  Overton  II.  You 
know.  The  North  Shore  Overtons.  Lake  Forest. 
They  came  in  late,  and  occupied  the  entire  third  row 


52  CHEERFUL—BY  REQUEST 

at  the  opening  performance  of  "Believe  Me!"  And 
Ethel  was  Nicky's  partner.  She  was  glowing  like  a 
rose.  When  the  lights  went  up  after  the  first  act 
Ethel  saw  that  her  uncle  Jo  was  seated  just  ahead  of 
her  with  what  she  afterward  described  as  a  blonde. 
Then  her  uncle  had  turned  around,  and  seeing  her,  had 
been  surprised  into  a  smile  that  spread  genially  all  over 
his  plump  and  rubicund  face.  Then  he  had  turned  to 
face  forward  again,  quickly. 

"Who's  the  old  bird?"  Nicky  had  asked.  Ethel  had 
pretended  not  to  hear,  so  he  had  asked  again. 

"My  Uncle,"  Ethel  answered,  and  flushed  all  over 
her  delicate  face,  and  down  to  her  throat.  Nicky  had 
looked  at  the  blonde,  and  his  eyebrows  had  gone  up 
ever  so  slightly. 

It  spoiled  Ethel's  evening.  More  than  that,  as  she 
told  her  mother  of  it  later,  weeping,  she  declared  it 
had  spoiled  her  life. 

Eva  talked  it  over  with  her  husband  in  that  intimate, 
kimonoed  hour  that  precedes  bedtime.  She  gesticu- 
lated heatedly  with  her  hair  brush. 

"It's  disgusting,  that's  what  it  is.  Perfectly  dis- 
gusting. There's  no  fool  like  an  old  fool.  Imagine! 
A  creature  like  that.  At  his  time  of  life." 

There  exists  a  strange  and  loyal  kinship  among  men. 
"Well,  I  don't  know,"  Ben  said  now,  and  even  grinned 
a  little.  "I  suppose  a  boy's  got  to  sow  his  wild  oats 
some  time." 

"Don't  be  any  more  vulgar  than  you  can  help," 


THE  GAY  OLD  DOG  63 

Eva  retorted.  "And  1  think  you  know,  as  well  as  I, 
what  it  means  to  have  that  Overton  boy  interested  in 
Ethel." 

"If  he's  interested  in  her,"  Ben  blundered,  "I  guess 
the  fact  that  Ethel's  uncle  went  to  the  theatre  with 
some  one  who  wasn't  Ethel's  aunt  won't  cause  a  shud- 
der to  run  up  and  down  his  frail  young  frame,  will  it?" 

"All  right,"  Eva  had  retorted.  "If  you're  not  man 
enough  to  stop  it,  I'll  have  to,  that's  all.  I'm  going 
up  there  with  Stell  this  week." 

They  did  not  notify  Jo  of  their  coming.  Eva  tele- 
phoned his  apartment  when  she  knew  he  would  be  out, 
and  asked  his  man  if  he  expected  his  master  home  to 
dinner  that  evening.  The  man  had  said  yes.  Eva 
arranged  to  meet  Stell  in  town.  They  would  drive  to 
Jo's  apartment  together,  and  wait  for  him  there. 

When  she  reached  the  city  Eva  found  turmoil 
there.  ^The  first  of  the  American  troops  to  be  sent 
to  France  were  leaving.  Michigan  Boulevard  was 
a  billowing,  surging  mass:  Flags,  pennants,  banners 
crowds.  All  the  elements  that  make  for  demonstra- 
tion. And  over  the  whole — quiet.  No  holiday  crowd, 
this.  A  solid,  determined  mass  of  people  waiting 
patient  hours  to  see  the  khaki-clads  go  by.  Three 
years  of  indefatigable  reading  had  brought  them  to 
a  clear  knowledge  of  what  these  boys  were  going  to. 

"Isn't  it  dreadful!"  Stell  gasped. 

"Nicky  Overton's  only  nineteen,  thank  goodness." 

Their  car  was  caught  in  the  jam.    When  they  moved 


64  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

at  all  it  was  by  inches.  When  at  last  they  reached 
Jo's  apartment  they  were  flushed,  nervous,  apprehen- 
sive. But  he  had  not  yet  come  in.  So  they  waited. 

No,  they  were  not  staying  to  dinner  with  their 
brother,  they  told  the  relieved  houseman. 

Jo's  home  has  already  been  described  to  you.  Stell 
and  Eva,  sunk  in  rose-coloured  cushions,  viewed  it 
with  disgust,  and  some  mirth.  They  rather  avoided 
each  other's  eyes. 

"Carrie  ought  to  be  here,"  Eva  said.  They  both 
smiled  at  the  thought  of  the  austere  Carrie  in  the 
midst  of  those  rosy  cushions,  and  hangings,  and  lamps. 
Stell  rose  and  began  to  walk  about,  restlessly.  She 
picked  up  a  vase  and  laid  it  down;  straightened  a 
picture.  Eva  got  up,  too,  and  wandered  into  the  hall. 
She  stood  there  a  moment,  listening.  Then  she  turned 
and  passed  into  Jo's  bedroom.  And  there  you  knew 
Jo  for  what  he  was. 

This  room  was  as  bare  as  the  other  had  been  ornate. 
It  was  Jo,  the  clean-minded  and  simple-hearted,  in 
revolt  against  the  cloying  luxury  with  which  he  had 
surrounded  himself.  The  bedroom,  of  all  rooms  in 
any  house,  reflects  the  personality  of  its  occupant. 
True,  the  actual  furniture  was  panelled,  cupid-sur- 
mounted,  and  ridiculous.  It  had  been  the  fruit  of 
Jo's  first  orgy  of  the  senses.  But  now  it  stood  out  in 
that  stark  little  room  with  an  air  as  incongruous  and 
ashamed  as  that  of  a  pink  tarleton  danseuse  who 
finds  herself  in  a  monk's  cell.  None  of  those  wall- 


THE  GAY  OLD  DOG  65 

pictures  with  which  bachelor  bedrooms  are  reputed 
to  be  hung.  No  satin  slippers.  No  scented  notes. 
Two  plain-backed  military  brushes  on  the  chiffonier 
(and  he  so  nearly  hairless!).  A  little  orderly  stack  of 
books  on  the  table  near  the  bed.  Eva  fingered  their 
titles  and  gave  a  little  gasp.  One  of  them  was  on 
gardening. 

"Well,  of  all  things !"  exclaimed  SteU.  A  book  on 
the  War,  by  an  Englishman.  A  detective  story  of  the 
lurid  type  that  lulls  us  to  sleep.  His  shoes  ranged 
in  a  careful  row  in  the  closet,  with  a  shoe-tree  in  every 
one  of  them.  There  was  something  speaking  about 
them.  They  looked  so  human.  Eva  shut  the  door 
on  them,  quickly.  Some  bottles  on  the  dresser.  A  jar 
of  pomade.  An  ointment  such  as  a  man  uses  who  is 
growing  bald  and  is  panic-stricken  too  late.  An  in- 
surance calendar  on  the  wall.  Some  rhubarb-and-soda 
mixture  on  the  shelf  in  the  bathroom,  and  a  little  box 
of  pepsin  tablets. 

"Eats  all  kinds  of  things  at  all  hours  of  the  night," 
Eva  said,  and  wandered  out  into  the  rose-coloured 
front  room  again  with  the  air  of  one  who  is  chagrined 
at  her  failure  to  find  what  she  has  sought.  Stell  fol- 
lowed her  furtively. 

"Where  do  you  suppose  he  can  be?"  she  demanded. 
"It's"— she  glanced  at  her  wrist— "why,  it's  after 
six!" 

And  then  there  was  a  little  click.  The  two  women 
sat  up,  tense.  The  door  opened.  Jo  came  in.  He 


66  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

blinked  a  little.  The  two  women  in  the  rosy  room 
stood  up. 

"Why— Eve!  Why,  Babe!  Well!  Why  didn't 
you  let  me  know?" 

"We  were  just  about  to  leave.  We  thought  you 
weren't  coming  home." 

Joe  came  in,  slowly. 

"I  was  in  the  jam  on  Michigan,  watching  the 
boys  go  by."  He  sat  down,  heavily.  The  light  from 
the  window  fell  on  him.  And  you  saw  that  his  eyes 
were  red. 

And  you'll  have  to  learn  why.  He  had  found  him- 
self one  of  the  thousands  in  the  jam  on  Michigan 
Avenue,  as  he  said.  He  had  a  place  near  the  curb, 
where  his  big  frame  shut  off  the  view  of  the  unfortu- 
nates behind  him.  He  waited  with  the  placid  interest 
of  one  who  has  subscribed  to  all  the  funds  and  societies 
to  which  a  prosperous,  middle-aged  business  man  is 
called  upon  to  subscribe  in  war  time.  Then,  just  as 
he  was  about  to  leave,  impatient  at  the  delay,  the 
crowd  had  cried,  with  a  queer  dramatic,  exultant  note 
in  its  voice,  "Here  they  come!  Here  come  the  boys!" 

Just  at  that  moment  two  little,  futile,  frenzied 
fists  began  to  beat  a  mad  tattoo  on  Jo  Hertz's  broad 
back.  Jo  tried  to  turn  in  the  crowd,  all  indignant 
resentment.  "  Say,  looka  here !" 

The  little  fists  kept  up  their  frantic  beating  and 
pushing.  And  a  voice — a  choked,  high  little  voice — 
cried,  "Let  me  by!  I  can't  see!  You  man,  you!  You 


THE  GAY  OLD  DOG  67 

big  fat  man!  My  boy's  going  by — to  war — and  I 
can't  see!  Let  me  by!" 

Jo  scrooged  around,  still  keeping  his  place.  He 
looked  down.  And  upturned  to  him  in  agonised  appeal 
was  the  face  of  little  Emily.  They  stared  at  each  other 
for  what  seemed  a  long,  long  time.  It  was  really  only 
the  fraction  of  a  second.  Then  Jo  put  one  great  arm 
firmly  around  Emily's  waist  and  swung  her  around 
in  front  of  him.  His  great  bulk  protected  her.  Emily 
was  clinging  to  his  hand.  She  was  breathing  rapidly, 
as  if  she  had  been  running.  Her  eyes  were  straining 
up  the  street. 

"Why,  Emily,  how  in  the  world!— 

"I  ran  away.  Fred  didn't  want  me  to  come.  He 
said  it  would  excite  me  too  much." 

"Fred?" 

"My  husband.  He  made  me  promise  to  say  good- 
bye to  Jo  at  home." 

"Jo?" 

"Jo's  my  boy.  And  he's  going  to  war.  So  I  ran 
away.  I  had  to  see  him.  I  had  to  see  him  go." 

She  was  dry-eyed.  Her  gaze  was  straining  up  the 
street. 

"Why,  sure,"  said  Jo.  "Of  course  you  want  to  see 
him."  And  then  the  crowd  gave  a  great  roar.  There 
came  over  Jo  a  feeling  of  weakness.  He  was  trembling. 
The  boys  went  marching  by. 

"There  he  is,"  Emily  shrilled,  above  the  din.  "There 
he  is!  There  he  is!  There  he "  And  waved  a 


68  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

futile  little  hand.  It  wasn't  so  much  a  wave  as  a 
clutching.  A  clutching  after  something  beyond  her 
reach. 

" Which  one?    Which  one,  Emily?" 

"The  handsome  one.  The  handsome  one.  There !" 
Her  voice  quavered  and  died. 

Jo  put  a  steady  hand  on  her  shoulder.  "Point  him 
out,"  he  commanded.  "Show  me."  And  the  next 
instant.  "Never  mind.  I  see  him." 

Somehow,  miraculously,  he  had  picked  him  from 
among  the  hundreds.  Had  picked  him  as  surely  as 
his  own  father  might  have.  It  was  Emily's  boy.  He 
was  marching  by,  rather  stiffly.  He  was  nineteen,  and 
fun-loving,  and  he  had  a  girl,  and  he  didn't  particularly 
want  to  go  to  France  and — to  go  to  France.  But 
more  than  he  had  hated  going,  he  had  hated  not  to 
go.  So  he  marched  by,  looking  straight  ahead,  his  jaw 
set  so  that  his  chin  stuck  out  just  a  little.  Emily's  boy. 

Jo  looked  at  him,  and  his  face  flushed  purple.  His 
eyes,  the  hard-boiled  eyes  of  a  Loop-hound,  took  on 
the  look  of  a  sad  old  man.  And  suddenly  he  was  no 
longer  Jo,  the  sport;  old  J.  Hertz,  the  gay  dog.  He  was 
Jo  Hertz,  thirty,  in  love  with  life,  in  love  with  Emily, 
and  with  the  stinging  blood  of  young  manhood  coursing 
through  his  veins. 

Another  minute  and  the  boy  had  passed  on  up  the 
broad  street — the  fine,  flag-bedecked  street — just  one 
of  a  hundred  service-hats  bobbing  in  rhythmic  motion 
like  sandy  waves  lapping  a  shore  and  flowing  on. 


THE  GAY  OLD  DOG  69' 

Then  he  disappeared  altogether. 

Emily  was  clinging  to  Jo.  She  was  mumbling  some- 
thing, over  and  over.  "I  can't.  I  can't.  Don't  ask 
me  to.  I  can't  let  him  go.  Like  that.  I  can't." 

Jo  said  a  queer  thing. 

"Why,  Emily!  We  wouldn't  have  him  stay  home, 
would  we?  We  wouldn't  want  him  to  do  anything 
different,  would  we?  Not  our  boy.  I'm  glad  he  en- 
listed. I'm  proud  of  him.  So  are  you  glad." 

Little  by  little  he  quieted  her.  He  took  her  to  the 
car  that  was  waiting,  a  worried  chauffeur  in  charge. 
They  said  good-bye,  awkwardly.  Emily's  face  was  a 
red,  swollen  mass. 

So  it  was  that  when  Jo  entered  his  own  hallway  half 
an  hour  later  he  blinked,  dazedly,  and  when  the  light 
from  the  window  fell  on  him  you  saw  that  his  eyes 
were  red. 

Eva  was  not  one  to  beat  about  the  bush.  She  sat 
forward  in  her  chair,  clutching  her  bag  rather  ner- 
vously. 

1 '  Now,  look  here,  Jo.  S tell  and  I  are  here  for  a  reason. 
We're  here  to  tell  you  that  this  thing's  got  to  stop." 

"  Thing?     Stop?" 

"You  know  very  well  what  I  mean.  You  saw  me 
at  the  milliner's  that  day.  And  night  before  last, 
Ethel.  We're  all  disgusted.  If  you  must  go  about 
with  people  like  that,  please  have  some  sense  of 
decency." 

Something  gathering  in  Jo's  face  should  have  warned 


70  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

her.  But  he  was  slumped  down  in  his  chair  in  such  a 
huddle,  and  he  looked  so  old  and  fat  that  she  did 
not  heed  it.  She  went  on.  "You've  got  us  to  con- 
sider. Your  sisters.  And  your  nieces.  Not  to  speak 
of  your  own 

But  he  got  to  his  feet  then,  shaking,  and  at  what  she 
saw  in  his  face  even  Eva  faltered  and  stopped.  It 
wasn't  at  all  the  face  of  a  fat,  middle-aged  sport.  It 
was  a  face  Jovian,  terrible. 

"You!"  he  began,  low- voiced,  ominous.  "You!" 
He  raised  a  great  fist  high.  "You  two  murderers! 
You  didn't  consider  me,  twenty  years  ago.  You  come 
to  me  with  talk  like  that.  Where's  my  boy !  You  killed 
him,  you  two,  twenty  years  ago.  And  now  he  belongs 
to  somebody  else.  Where's  my  son  that  should  have 
gone  marching  by  to-day?"  He  flung  his  arms  out  in 
a  great  gesture  of  longing.  The  red  veins  stood  out 
or  his  forehead  "Where's  my  son!  Answer  me  that, 
y6u  two  selfish,  miserable  women.  Where's  my  son!" 
Then,  as  they  huddled  together,  frightened,  wild-eyed. 
"Out  of  my  house!  Out  of  my  house!  Before  I  hurt 
you!" 

They  fled,  terrified.    The  door  banged  behind  them. 

Jo  stood,  shaking,  in  the  centre  of  the  room.  Then 
he  reached  for  a  chair,  gropingly,  and  sat  down.  He 
passed  one  moist,  flabby  hand  over  his  forehead  and 
it  came  away  wet.  The  telephone  rang.  He  sat  still. 
It  sounded  far  away  and  unimportant,  like  something 
forgotten.  I  think  he  did  not  even  hear  it  with  his 


THE  GAY  OLD  DOG  71 

conscious  ear.  But  it  rang  and  rang  insistently.  Jo 
liked  to  answer  his  telephone,  when  at  home. 

"Hello!"  He  knew  instantly  the  voice  at  the  other 
end. 

"  That  you,  Jo?"  it  said. 

"Yes." 

"How's  my  boy?" 

"I'm— all  right." 

"Listen,  Jo.  The  crowd's  coming  over  to-night. 
I've  fixed  up  a  little  poker  game  for  you.  Just  eight 
of  us." 

"I  can't  come  to-night,  Gert" 

"Can't!    Why  not?" 

"I'm  not  feeling  so  good." 

"You  just  said  you  were  all  right." 

"  I  am  all  right.    Just  kind  of  tired." 

The  voice  took  on  a  cooing  note.  "Is  my  Joey 
tired?  Then  he  shall  be  all  comfy  on  the  sofa, 
and  he  doesn't  need  to  play  if  he  don't  want  to.  No, 


sir." 


Jo  stood  staring  at  the  black  mouth-piece  of  the 
telephone.  He  was  seeing  a  procession  go  marching  by. 
Boys,  hundreds  of  boys,  in  khaki. 

"Hello!  Hello!"  the  voice  took  on  an  anxious  note. 
"Are  you  there?" 

"Yes,"  wearily. 

"Jo,  there's  something  the  matter.  You're  sick. 
I'm  coming  right  over." 

"Nor 


72  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

"Why  not?  You  sound  as  if  you'd  been  sleeping. 
Look  here- 

" Leave  me  alone!"  cried  Jo,  suddenly,  and  the 
receiver  clacked  onto  the  hook.  "Leave  me  alone. 
Leave  me  alone."  Long  after  the  connection  had  been 
broken. 

He  stood  staring  at  the  instrument  with  unseeing 
eyes.  Then  he  turned  and  walked  into  the  front  room. 
All  the  light  had  gone  out  of  it.  Dusk  had  come  on. 
All  the  light  had  gone  out  of  everything.  The  zest 
had  gone  out  of  life.  The  game  was  over — the  game 
he  had  been  playing  against  loneliness  and  disappoint- 
ment. And  he  was  just  a  tired  old  man.  A  lonely, 
tired  old  man  in  a  ridiculous,  rose-coloured  room  that 
had  grown,  all  of  a  sudden,  drab. 


Ill 

THE    TOUGH    GUY 

YOU  could  not  be  so  very  tough  in  Chippewa, 
Wisconsin.  But  Buzz  Werner  managed  magnifi- 
cently with  the  limited  means  at  hand.  Before  he 
was  nineteen  mothers  were  warning  their  sons  against 
him,  and  brothers  their  sisters.  Buzz  Werner  not 
only  was  tough — he  looked  tough.  When  he  spoke — • 
which  was  often — his  speech  slid  sinisterly  out  of 
the  extreme  left  corner  of  his  mouth.  He  had  a 
trick  of  hitching  himself  up  from  the  belt — one  palm 
on  the  stomach  and  a  sort  of  heaving  jerk  from  the 
waist,  as  a  prize  fighter  does  it — that  would  have 
made  a  Van  Bibber  look  rough. 

His  name  was  not  really  Buzz,  but  quotes  are 
dispensed  with  because  no  one  but  his  mother  remem- 
bered what  it  originally  had  been.  His  mother 
called  him  Ernie  and  she  alone,  in  all  Chippewa,  Wis- 
consin, was  unaware  that  her  son  was  the  town  tough 
guy.  But  even  she  sometimes  mildly  remonstrated 
with  him  for  being  what  she  called  kind  of  wild.  Buzz 
had  yellow  hair  with  a  glint  in  it,  and  it  curled  up 
into  a  bang  at  the  front.  No  amount  of  wetting  or 
greasing  could  subdue  that  irrepressible  forelock.  A  boy 

73 


74  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

with  hair  like  that  never  grows  up  in  his  mother's  eyes. 

If  Buzz's  real  name  was  lost  in  the  dim  mists  of 
boyhood,  the  origin  and  fitness  of  his  nickname  were 
apparent  after  two  minutes'  conversation  with  him. 
Buzz  Werner  was  called  Buzz  not  only  because  he 
talked  too  much,  but  because  he  was  a  braggart.  His 
conversation  bristled  with  the  perpendicular  pronoun, 
and  his  pet  phrase  was,  "I  says  ta  him " 

He  buzzed. 

By  the  time  Buzz  was  fourteen  he  was  stealing 
brass  from  the  yards  of  the  big  paper  mills  down  in 
the  Flats  and  selling  it  to  the  junk  man.  How  he 
escaped  the  reform  school  is  a  mystery.  Perhaps  it 
was  the  blond  forelock.  At  nineteen  he  was  running 
with  the  Kearney  girl. 

Twenty-five  years  hence  Chippewa  will  have  learned 
to  treat  the  Kearney-girl  type  as  a  disease,  and  a 
public  menace.  Which  she  was.  The  Kearney  girl 
ran  wild  in  Chippewa,  and  Chippewa  will  be  paying 
taxes  on  the  fruit  of  her  liberty  for  a  hundred  years 
to  come.  The  Kearney  girl  was  a  beautiful  idiot,  with 
a  lovely  oval  face,  and  limpid,  rather  wistful  blue  eyes, 
and  fair,  fine  hair,  and  a  long  slim  neck.  She  looked 
very  much  like  those  famous  wantons  of  history,  from 
Lucrezia  Borgia  to  Nell  Gwyn,  that  you  see  pictured 
in  the  galleries  of  Europe— all  very  mild  and  girlish, 
with  moist  red  mouths,  like  a  puppy's,  so  that  you 
wonder  if  they  have  not  been  basely  defamed  through 
all  the  centuries. 


THE   TOUGH   GUY  75 

The  Kearney  girPs  father  ran  a  saloon  out  on  Second 
Avenue,  and  every  few  days  the  Chippewa  paper  would 
come  out  with  a  story  of  a  brawl,  a  knifing,  or  a  free- 
for-all  fight  following  a  Saturday  night  in  Kearney's. 
The  Kearney  girl  herself  was  forever  running  up  and 
down  Grand  Avenue,  which  was  the  main  business 
street.  She  would  trail  up  and  down  from  the  old 
Armory  to  the  post-office  and  back  again.  When  she 
turned  off  into  the  homeward  stretch  on  Outagamie 
Street  there  always  slunk  after  her  some  stoop-shoul- 
dered, furtive,  loping  youth.  But  he  never  was 
seen  with  her  on  Grand  Avenue.  She  had  often  been 
up  before  old  Judge  Colt  for  some  nasty  business  or 
other.  At  such  times  the  shabby  office  of  the  Justice 
of  the  Peace  would  be  full  of  shawled  mothers  and 
heavy-booted,  work-worn  fathers,  and  an  aunt  or 
two,  and  some  cousins,  and  always  a  slinking  youth 
fumbling  with  the  hat  in  his  hands,  his  glance  darting 
hither  and  thither,  from  group  to  group,  but  never 
resting  for  a  moment  within  any  one  else's  gaze. 
Of  all  these  present,  the  Kearney  girl  herself  was 
always  the  calmest.  Old  Judge  Colt  meted  out 
justice  according  to  his  lights.  Unfortunately,  the 
wearing  of  a  yellow  badge  on  the  breast  was  a  custom 
that  had  gone  out  some  years  before. 

This  nymph  it  was  who  had  taken  a  fancy  to  Buzz 
Werner.  It  looked  very  black  for  his  future. 

The  strange  part  of  it  was  that  the  girl  possessed 
little  attraction  for  Buzz.  It  was  she  who  made  all 


76  CHEERFUL—BY  REQUEST 

the  advances.  Buzz  had  sprung  from  very  decent 
stock,  as  you  shall  see.  And  something  about  the 
sultry  unwholesomeness  of  this  girl  repelled  him, 
though  he  was  hardly  aware  that  this  was  so.  Buzz 
and  his  gang  would  meet  down  town  of  a  Saturday 
night,  very  moist  as  to  hair  and  clean  as  to  soft  shirt. 
They  would  lounge  on  the  corner  of  Grand  and  Outa- 
gamie,  in  front  of  Schroeder's  brightly  lighted  drug 
store,  watching  the  girls  go  by.  They  were,  for  the 
most  part,  a  pimply-faced  lot.  They  would  shuffle 
their  feet  in  a  slow  jig,  hands  in  pockets.  When  a 
late  comer  joined  them  it  was  considered  au  fait 
to  welcome  him  by  assuming  a  fistic  attitude,  after 
the  style  of  the  pugilists  pictured  in  the  barber-shop 
magazines,  and  spar  a  good-natured  and  make-believe 
round  with  him,  with  much  agile  dancing  about  in 
a  circle,  head  held  stiffly,  body  crouching,  while 
working  a, rapid  and  facetious  right. 

This  corner,  or  Donovan's  pool-shack,  was  their 
club,  their  forum.  Here  they  recounted  their  exploits, 
bragged  of  their  triumphs,  boasted  of  their  girls, 
flexed  their  muscles  to  show  their  strength.  And  all 
through  their  talk  there  occurred  again  and  again  a 
certain  term  whose  use  is  common  to  their  kind.  Their 
remarks  were  prefaced  and  interlarded  and  concluded 
with  it,  so  that  it  was  no  longer  an  oath  or  a  blasphemy. 

"Je's,  I  was  sore  at  'm.  I  told  him  where  to  get 
off  at.  Nobody  can  talk  to  me  like_that.  Je's,  I 
should  say  not." 


THE  TOUGH   GUY  77 

So  accustomed  had  it  grown  that  it  was  not  even 
thought  of  as  profanity. 

If  Buzz's  family  could  have  heard  him  in  his  talk 
with  his  street-corner  companions  they  would  not 
have  credited  their  ears.  A  mouthy  braggart  in 
company  is  often  silent  in  his  own  home,  and  Buzz  was 
no  exception  to  this  rule.  Fortunately,  Buzz's  brag- 
gadocio carried  with  it  a  certain  conviction.  He 
never  kept  a  job  more  than  a  month,  and  his  own 
account  of  his  leave-taking  was  always  as  vainglori- 
ous as  it  was  dramatic. 

"  'G'wan!'  I  says  to  him,  'Who  you  talkin'  to? 
I  don't  have  to  take  no  thin'  from  you  nor  nobody 
like  you,'  I  says.  'I'm  as  good  as  you  are  any  day, 
and  better.  You  can  have  your  dirty  job,'  I  says. 
And  with  that  I  grre  him  my  tune  and  walked  out 
on  'm.  Je's,  he  was  sore!" 

They  would  listen  to  him,  appreciatively,  but  with 
certain  mental  reservations;  reservations  inevitable 
when  a  speaker's  name  is  Buzz.  One  by  one  they 
would  melt  away  as  their  particular  girl,  after  flaunting 
by  with  a  giggle  and  a  sidelong  glance  for  the  dozenth 
time,  would  switch  her  skirts  around  the  corner  of 
Outagamie  Street  past  the  Brill  House,  homeward 
bound. 

"Well,  s'long,"  they  would  say.  And  lounging 
after  her,  would  overtake  her  in  the  shadow  of  the 
row  of  trees  in  front  of  the  Agassiz  School. 

If  the  Werner  family  had  been  city  folk  they  would, 


78  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

perforce,  have  burrowed  in  one  of  those  rabbit-warren 
tenements  that  line  block  after  block  of  city  streets. 
But  your  small-town  labouring  man  is  likely  to  own 
his  two-story  frame  house  with  a  garden  patch  in  the 
back  and  a  cement  walk  leading  up  to  the  front  porch, 
and  pork  roast  on  Sundays.  The  Werners  had  all 
this,  no  thanks  to  Pa  Werner;  no  thanks  to  Buzz, 
surely;  and  little  to  Minnie  Werner  who  clerked  in 
the  Sugar  Bowl  Candy  Store  and  tried  to  dress  like 
Angie  Hatton  whose  father  owned  the  biggest  Pulp 
and  Paper  mill  in  the  Fox  River  Valley.  No,  the 
house  and  the  garden,  the  porch  and  the  cement 
sidewalk,  and  the  pork  roast  all  had  their  origin  in 
Ma  Werner's  tireless  energy,  in  Ma  Werner's  thrift; 
in  her  patience  and  unremitting  toil,  her  nimble 
fingers  and  bent  back,  her  shapeless  figure  and  un- 
bounded and  unexpressed  (verbally,  that  is)  love 
for  her  children.  Pa  Werner — sullen,  lazy,  brooding, 
tyrannical — she  soothed  and  mollified  for  the  children's 
sake,  or  shouted  down  with  a  shrewish  outburst, 
as  the  occasion  required.  An  expert  stone-mason  by 
trade,  Pa  Werner  could  be  depended  on  only  when 
he  was  not  drinking,  or  when  he  was  not  on  strike, 
or  when  he  had  not  quarrelled  with  the  foreman. 
An  anarchist,  Pa — dissatisfied  with  things  as  they 
were,  but  with  no  plan  for  improving  them.  His 
evil-smelling  pipe  between  his  lips,  he  would  sit, 
stocking-footed,  in  silence,  smoking  and  thinking 
vague,  formless,  surly  thoughts.  This  sullen  unrest 


THE  TOUGH   GUY  79 

and  rebellion  it  was  that,  transmitted  to  his  son, 
had  made  Buzz  the  unruly  braggart  that  he  was, 
and  which,  twenty  or  thirty  years  hence,  would  find 
him  just  such  a  one  as  his  father — useless,  evil-tem- 
pered, half  brutal,  defiant  of  order. 

It  was  in  May,  a  fine  warm  sunny  day,  that  Ma 
Werner,  looking  up  from  the  garden  patch  where  she 
was  spading,  a  man's  old  battered  felt  hat  perched 
grotesquely  atop  her  white  head,  saw  Buzz  lounging 
homeward,  cutting  across  lots  from  Bates  Street,  his 
dinner  pail  glinting  in  the  sun.  It  was  four  o'clock 
in  the  afternoon.  Ma  Werner  straightened  painfully 
and  her  over-flushed  face  took  on  a  purplish  tingb. 
She  wiped  her  moist  chin  with  an  apron-corner. 

As  Buzz  espied  her  his  gait  became  a  swagger. 
At  sight  of  that  swagger  Ma  knew.  She  dropped  her 
spade  and  plodded  heavily  through  the  freshly  turned 
earth  to  the  back  porch  as  Buzz  turned  in  at  the  walk. 
She  shifted  her  weight  ponderously  as  she  wiped 
first  one  earth-crusted  shoe  and  then  the  other. 

"What's  the  matter,  Ernie?  You  ain't  sick,  are 
you?" 

"Naw." 

"What  you  home  so  early  for?" 

"Because  I  feel  like  it,  that's  why." 

He  took  the  back  steps  at  a  bound  and  slammed  the 
kitchen  door  behind  him.  Ma  Werner  followed  heavily 
after.  Buzz  was  hanging  his  hat  up  behind  the  kitchen 
door.  He  turned  with  a  scowl  as  his  mother  entered. 


8o  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

She  looked  even  more  ludicrous  in  the  house  than 
she  had  outside,  with  her  skirts  tucked  up  to  make 
spading  the  easier,  so  that  there  was  displayed  an 
unseemly  length  of  thick  ankle  rising  solidly  above 
the  old  pair  of  men's  side-boots  that  encased  her 
feet.  The  battered  hat  perched  rakishly  atop  her 
knob  of  gray-white  hair  gave  her  a  jaunty,  sporting 
look,  as  of  a  ponderous,  burlesque  Watteau. 

She  abandoned  pretense.      "Ernie,  your  pa'll  be 
awful  mad.    You  know  the  way  he  carried  on  the  last 


time." 


"Let  him.  He  aint  worked  five  days  himself  this 
month."  Then,  at  a  sudden  sound  from  the  front  of 
the  house,  "He  ain't  home,  is  he?" 

"That's  the  shade  napping." 

Buzz  turned  toward  the  inside  wooden  stairway  that 
led  to  the  half-story  above.  But  his  mother  followed> 
with  surprising  agility  for  so  heavy  a  woman.  She 
put  a  hand  on  his  arm.  "Such  a  good-payin'  job 
Ernie.  An'  you  said  only  yesterday  you  liked  it. 
Some  thin'  must  've  happened." 

There  broke  a  grim  little  laugh  from  Buzz.  "Be- 
lieve me  something  happened  good  an'  plenty."  A 
little  frightened  look  came  into  his  eyes.  "I  just  had 
a  run-in  with  young  Hatton." 

The  red  faded  from  her  face  and  a  grey-white  mask 
seemed  to  slip  down  over  it.  "You  don't  mean  Hatton! 
Not  Hatton's  son.  Ernie,  you  ain't  done " 

A  dash  of  his  street-corner  bravado  came  back  to 


THE  TOUGH  GUY  81 

him.  "Aw,  keep  your  hair  on,  Ma.  I  didn't  know 
it  was  young  Hatton  when  I  hit'm.  An'  anyway 
nobody  his  age  is  gonna  tell  me  where  to  get  off  at. 
Say,  w'en  a  guy  who  ain't  twenty- three,  hardly,  and 
that  never  done  a  lick  in  his  life  except  go  to  college, 
the  sissy,  tries  t' " 

But  the  first  sentence  only  had  penetrated  her  brain. 
She  grappled  with  it,  dizzily.  "Hit  him!  Ernie,  you 
don't  mean  you  hit  him!  Not  Hatton's  son!  Ernie!" 

"Sure  I  did.  You  oughta  seen  his  face."  But  there 
was  very  little  triumph  or  satisfaction  in  Buzz  Werner's 
face  or  voice  as  he  said  it.  "Course,  I  didn't  know 
it  was  him  when  I  done  it.  I  dunno  would  it  have 
made  any  difference  if  I  had." 

She  seemed  so  old  and  so  shrunken,  in  spite  of  her 
bulk,  as  she  looked  up  at  him.  The  look  in  her  eyes 
was  so  strained.  The  way  her  hand  brought  her 
apron-corner  up  to  her  mouth,  as  though  to  stifle  the 
fear  that  shook  her,  was  so  groping,  somehow,  so  un- 
certain, that,  paradoxically,  the  pitifulness  of  it 
reacted  to  make  him  savage. 

When  she  quavered  her  next  question,  "What  was 
he  doin'  in  the  mill?"  he  turned  toward  the  stairway 
again,  flinging  his  answer  over  his  shoulder. 

"Learnin'  the  business,  that's  what.  From  the 
ground  up,  see?"  He  turned  at  the  first  stair  and 
leaned  forward  and  down,  one  hand  on  the  door- 
jamb.  "Well,  believe  me  he  don't  use  me  as  no  ground- 
dirt.  An'  when  I'm  takin'  the  screen  off  the  big  roll — 


82  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

see? — he  comes  up  to  me  an'  says  I'm  handlin'  it 
rough  an'  it's  a  delicate  piece  of  mechanism.  'Who're 
you?'  I  says.  'Never  mind  who  I  am,'  he  says,  Tm 
working'  on  this  job,'  he  says,  'an'  this  is  a  paper 
mill  you're  workin'  in,'  he  says,  'not  a  boiler  factory. 
Treat  the  machinery  according  like  a  real  workman,' 
he  says.  The  simp!  I  just  stepped  down  off  the  plat- 
form of  the  big  press,  and  I  says,  'Well,  you  look 
like  a  kinda  delicate  piece  of  mechanism  yourself,' 
I  says,  'an'  need  careful  handlin',  so  take  that  for  a 
starter,'  I  says.  An'  with  that  I  handed  him  one  in 
the  nose."  Buzz  laughed,  but  there  was  little  mirth 
in  it.  "I  bet  he  seen  enough  wheels  an'  delicate 
machinery  that  minute  to  set  up  a  whole  new 
plant." 

There  was  nothing  of  mirth  in  the  woman's  drawn 
face.  "Oh,  Ernie,  f'r  God's  sake!  What  they  goin' 
to  do  to  you!" 

He  was  half  way  up  the  narrow  stairway,  she  at 
the  foot  of  it,  peering  up  at  him.  "They  won't  do 
anything.  I  guess  old  Hatton  ain't  so  stuck  on  havin' 
his  swell  golf  club  crowd  know  his  little  boy  was  beat 
up  by  one  of  the  workmen." 

He  was  clumping  about  upstairs  now.  So  she  turned 
toward  the  kitchen,  dazedly.  She  glanced  at  the  clock. 
Going  on  toward  five.  Still  in  the  absurd  hat  she 
got  out  a  panful  of  potatoes  and  began  to  peel  them 
skilfuly,  automatically.  The  seamed  and  hardened 
fingers  had  come  honestly  by  their  deftness.  They 


THE  TOUGH   GUY  83 

had  twirled  and  peeled  pecks — bushels — tons  of  these 
brown  balls  in  their  time. 

At  five-thirty  Pa  came  in.  At  six,  Minnie.  She 
had  to  go  back  to  the  Sugar  Bowl  until  nine.  Five 
minutes  later  the  supper  was  steaming  on  the  table. 

"Ernie,"  called  Ma,  toward  the  ceiling.  "Er-nie! 
Supper 's  on."  The  three  sat  down  at  the  table  without 
waiting.  Pa  had  slipped  off  his  shoes,  and  was  in  his 
stockinged  feet.  They  ate  in  silence.  It  was  a  good 
meal.  A  European  family  of  the  same  class  would  have 
considered  it  a  banquet.  There  were  meat  and  vege- 
tables, butter  and  home-made  bread,  preserve  and  cake, 
true  to  the  standards  of  the  extravagant  American 
labouring-class  household.  In  the  summer  the  garden 
supplied  them  with  lettuce,  beans,  peas,  onions, 
radishes,  beets,  potatoes,  corn,  thanks  to  Ma's  aching 
back  and  blistered  hands.  They  stored  enough  vege- 
tables in  the  cellar  to  last  through  the  winter. 

Buzz  usually  cleaned  up  after  supper.  But  to-night, 
when  he  came  down,  he  was  already  clean-shaven, 
clean-shirted,  and  his  hair  was  wet  from  the  comb. 
He  took  his  place  in  silence.  His  acid-stained  work 
shoes  had  been  replaced  by  his  good  tan  ones.  Evi- 
dently he  was  going  down  town  after  supper.  Buzz 
never  took  any  exercise  for  the  sake  of  his  body's  good. 
Sometimes  he  and  the  Lembke  boys  across  the  way 
played  a  game  of  ball  in  the  middle  of  the  road,  or  in 
the  vacant  lot,  but  they  did  it  out  of  the  game  instinct, 
and  with  no  thought  of  their  muscles'  gain. 


84  CHEERFUL—BY  REQUEST 

But  to-night,  evidently,  there  was  to  be  no  ball. 
Buzz  ate  little.  His  mother,  forever  between  the  stove 
and  the  table,  ate  less.  But  that  was  nothing  unusual 
in  her.  She  waited  on  the  others,  but  mostly  she 
hovered  about  the  boy. 

"Ernie,  you  ain't  eaten  your  potatoes.  Look  how 
nice  an'  mealy  they  are." 

"Don't  want  none." 

"Ernie,  would  you  rather  have  a  baked  apple  than 
the  raspberry  preserve?  I  fixed  a  pan  this  morning." 

"Naw.    Lemme  alone.    I  ain't  hungry." 

He  slouched  from  the  table.  Minnie,  teacup  in  hand, 
regarded  him  over  its  rim  with  wide,  malicious  eyes. 
"I  saw  that  Kearney  girl  go  by  here  before  supper, 
and  she  rubbered  in  like  everything." 

"You're  a  liar,"  said  Buzz,  unemotionally. 

"I  did  so!  She  went  by  and  then  she  came  back 
again.  I  saw  her  both  times.  Say,  I  guess  I  ought  to 
know  her.  Anybody  in  town'd  know  Kearney." 

Buzz  had  been  headed  toward  the  front  porch.  He 
hesitated  and  turned,  now,  and  picked  up  the  news- 
paper from  the  sitting-room  sofa.  Pa  Werner,  in 
trousers,  shirt  and  suspenders,  was  padding  about 
the  kitchen  with  his  pipe  and  tobacco.  He  came  into 
the  sitting  room  now  and  stood  a  moment,  his  lips 
twisted  about  the  pipe-stem.  The  pipe's  putt-putting 
gave  warning  that  he  was  about  to  break  into  unac- 
customed speech.  He  regarded  Buzz  with  beady, 
narrowed  eyes. 


THE  TOUGH  GUY  85 

"You  let  me  see  you  around  with  that  Kearney  girl 
and  I'll  break  every  bone  in  your  body,  and  hers  too. 
The  hussy!" 

"Oh,  you  will,  will  you?" 

Ma,  who  had  been  making  countless  trips  from  the 
kitchen  to  the  back  garden  with  water  pail  and  sprin- 
kling can  sagging  from  either  arm,  put  in  a  word  to 
stay  the  threatening  storm.  "Now,  Pa!  Now,  Ernie!" 
The  two  men  subsided  into  bristling  silence. 

Suddenly,  "There  she  is  again!"  shrilled  Minnie, 
from  her  bedroom.  Buzz  shrank  back  in  his  chair. 
Old  man  Werner,  with  a  muttered  oath,  went  to  the 
open  doorway  and  stood  there,  puffing  savage  little 
spurts  of  smoke  streetward.  The  Kearney  girl  stared 
brazenly  at  him  as  she  strolled  slowly  by,  a  slim  and 
sinister  figure.  Old  man  Werner  watched  her  until 
she  passed  out  of  sight. 

"You  go  gettin'  mixed  up  with  dirt  like  that," 
threatened  he,  "and  I'll  learn  you.  She'll  be  hangin' 
around  the  mill  yet,  the  brass-faced  thing.  If  I  hear 
of  it  I'll  get  the  foreman  to  put  her  off  the  place.  You'll 
stay  home  to-night.  Carry  a  pail  of  water  for  your  ma 


once." 


"Carry  it  yourself." 

Buzz,  with  a  wary  eye  up  the  street,  slouched  out 
to  the  front  porch,  into  the  twilight  of  the  warm  May 
evening.  Charley  Lembke,  from  his  porch  across  the 
street,  called  to  him:  "  Gobi7  down  town?" 

"Yeh,  I  guess  so." 


86  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

"Ain't  you  afraid  of  bein'  pinched?"  Buzz  turned 
his  head  quickly  toward  the  room  just  behind  him. 
He  turned  to  go  in.  Charley's  voice  came  again, 
clear  and  far-reaching.  "I  hear  you  had  a  run-in  with 
Hatton's  son,  and  knocked  him  down.  Some  class  t' 
you,  Buzz,  even  if  it  does  cost  you  your  job." 

From  within  the  sound  of  a  newspaper  hurled  to 
the  floor.  Pa  Werner  was  at  the  door.  "What's 
that!  What's  that  he's  sayin'?" 

Buzz,  cornered,  jutted  a  threatening  jaw  at  his  father 
and  brazened  it  out.  "  Can't  you  hear  good?" 

"  Come  on  in  here." 

Buzz  hesitated  a  moment.  Then  he  turned,  slowly, 
and  walked  into  the  little  sitting  room  with  an  attempt 
at  a  swagger  that  failed  to  convince  even  himself. 
He  leaned  against  the  side  of  the  door,  hands  in  pockets. 
Pa  Werner  faced  him,  black-browed.  "Is  that  right, 
what  he  said?  Lembke?  Huh?" 

"Sure  it's  right.  I  had  a  run-in  with  Hatton,  an' 
licked  him,  and  give'm  my  time.  What  you  goin'  to 
do  about  it?" 

Ma  Werner  was  in  the  room,  now.  Minnie,  passing 
through  on  her  way  to  work  again,  caught  the  electric 
current  of  the  storm  about  to  break  and  escaped  it 
with  a  parting: 

"Oh,  for  the  land's  sakes!  You  two.  Always  a- 
fighting." 

The  two  men  faced  each  other.  The  one  a  sturdy 
man-boy  nearing  twenty,  with  a  great  pair  of  shoulders 


THE  TOUGH   GUY  87 

and  a  clear  eye,  a  long,  quick  arm  and  a  deft  hand — 
these  last  his  assets  as  a  workman.  The  other,  gnarled, 
prematurely  wrinkled,  almost  gnome-like.  This  one 
took  his  pipe  from  between  his  lips  and  began  to 
speak.  The  drink  he  had  had  at  Wenzel's  on  the  way 
home  sparked  his  speech. 

He  began  with  a  string  of  epithets.  They  flowed 
from  his  lips,  an  acid  stream.  Pick  and  choose  as  I 
will,  there  is  none  that  can  be  repeated  here.  Old  Man 
Werner  had,  perhaps,  been  something  of  a  tough  guy 
himself,  in  his  youth.  As  he  reviled  his  son  now  you 
saw  that  son,  at  fifty,  just  such  another  stocking-  I 
footed,  bitter  old  man,  smoking  a  glum  pipe  on  the 
back  porch,  summer  evenings,  and  spitting  into  the 
fresh  young  grass. 

I  don't  say  that  this  thought  came  to  Buzz  as  his 
father  flayed  him  with  his  abuse.  But  there  was  some- 
thing unusual,  surely,  in  the  non-resistance  with 
which  he  allowed  the  storm  to  beat  about  his  head. 
Something  in  his  steady,  unruffled  gaze  caused  the  other 
man  to  falter  a  little  in  his  tirade,  and  finally  to  stop, 
almost  apprehensively.  He  had  paid  no  heed  to  Ma 
Werner's  attempts  at  pacification.  "Now,  Pa!"  she 
had  said,  over  and  over,  her  hand  on  his  arm,  though 

he  shook  it  off  again  and  again.     "Now,  Pa! " 

But  he  stopped  now,  fist  raised  in  a  last  profane  period. 
Buzz  stood  regarding  him  with  his  unblinking  stare. 

Finally:  "You  through?"  said  Buzz. 

"Ya-as,"  snarled  Pa,  "I'm  through.     Get  to  hell 


88  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

out  of  here.  You'll  be  hung  yet,  you  loafer.  A  good- 
for-nothing  bum,  that's  what.  Get  out  o'  here!" 

"I'm  gettin',  "  said  Buzz.  He  took  his  hat  off  the 
hook  and  wiped  it  carefully  with  the  lower  side  of  his 
sleeve,  round  and  round.  He  placed  it  on  his  head, 
jauntily.  He  stepped  to  the  kitchen,  took  a  tooth- 
pick from  the  little  red-and- white  glass  holder  on  the 
table,  and — with  this  emblem  of  insouciance,  at  an 
angle  of  ninety,  between  his  teeth — strolled  indo- 
lently, nonchalantly  down  the  front  steps,  along  the 
cement  walk  to  the  street  and  so  toward  town.  The 
two  old  people,  left  alone  in  the  sudden  silence  of  the 
house,  stared  after  the  swaggering  figure  until  the  dim 
twilight  blotted  it  out.  And  a  sinister  something 
seemed  to  close  its  icy  grip  about  the  heart  of  one  of 
them.  A  vague  premonition  that  she  could  only  feel, 
not  express,  made  her  next  words  seem  futile. 

"Pa,  you  oughtn't  to  talked  to  him  like  that.  He's 
just  a  little  wild.  He  looked  so  kind  of  funny  when  he 
went  out.  I  don'no,  he  looked  so  kind  of " 

"He  looked  like  the  bum  he  is,  that's  what.  No 
respect  for  nothing.  For  his  pa,  or  ma,  or  nothing. 
Down  on  the  corner  with  the  rest  of  'em,  that's  where 
he's  goin'.  Hatton  ain't  goin'  to  let  this  go  by.  You 


see." 


But  she,  on  her  way  to  the  kitchen,  repeated,  "I 
don'no,  he  looked  so  kind  of  funny.  He  looked  so  kind 
of- 

Considering  all  things — the  happenings  of  the  past 


THE  TOUGH   GUY  89 

few  hours,  at  least — Buzz,  as  he  strolled  on  down  toward 
Grand  Avenue  with  his  sauntering,  care-free  gait, 
did  undoubtedly  look  kind  of  funny.  The  red-hot  rage 
of  the  afternoon  and  the  white-hot  rage  of  the  evening 
had  choked  the  furnace  of  brain  and  soul  with  clinkers 
so  that  he  was  thinking  unevenly  and  disconnectedly. 
On  the  surface  he  was  cool  and  unruffled.  He  stopped 
for  a  moment  at  the  railroad  tracks  to  talk  with  Stumpy 
Cans,  the  one-legged  gateman.  The  little  bell  above 
Stumpy's  shanty  was  ringing  its  warning,  so  he  strolled 
leisurely  over  to  the  depot  platform  to  see  the  7:15 
come  in  from  Chicago.  When  the  train  pulled  out 
Buzz  went  on  down  the  street.  His  mind  was  darting 
here  and  there,  planning  this  revenge,  discarding  it; 
seizing  on  another,  abandoning  that.  He'd  show'm* 
He'd  show'm.  Sick  of  the  whole  damn  bunch,  any- 
way. .  .  .  Wonder  was  Hatton  going  to  raise  a  shindy, 
.  .  .  Let'm.  Who  cares?  .  .  .  The  old  man  was  a 
drunk,  that's  what.  .  .  .  Ma  had  looked  kinda 
sick.  .  .  . 

He  put  that  uncomfortable  thought  out  of  his  mind 
and  slammed  the  door  on  it.  Anyway,  he'd  show'm. 

Out  of  the  shadows  of  the  great  trees  in  front  of  the 
Agassiz  School  stepped  the  Kearney  girl,  like  a  lean 
and  hungry  cat.  One  hand  clutched  his  arm. 

Buzz  jumped  and  said  something  under  his  breath. 
Then  he  laughed,  shortly.  "Might  as  well  kill  a  guy 
as  scare  him  to  death!" 

She  thrust  one  hand  through  his  arm  and  linked  it 


9o  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

with  the  other.    "I've  been  waiting  for  you,  Buzz/' 

"Yeh.  Well,  let  me  tell  you  something.  You  quit 
traipsing  up  and  down  in  front  of  my  house,  see?" 

"I  wanted  to  see  you.  An'  I  didn't  know  whether 
you  was  coming  down  town  to-night  or  not." 

"Well,  I  am.  So  now  you  know."  He  pulled  away 
from  her,  but  she  twined  her  arm  the  tighter  about  his. 

"Ain't  sore  at  me,  are  yuh,  Buzz?" 

"No.    Leggo  my  arm." 

"If  you're  sore  because  I  been  foolin'  round  with 
that  little  wart  of  a  Donahue—  She  turned  wise 

eyes  up  to  him,  trying  to  make  them  limpid  in  the 
darkness. 

"What  do  I  care  who  you  run  with?" 

"Don't  you  care,  Buzz?"  The  words  were  soft 
but  there  was  a  steel  edge  to  her  utterance. 

"No." 

"Oh,  Buzz,  I'm  batty  about  you.  I  can't  help  it. 
can  I?  H'm?  Look  here,  you  go  on  to  Grand,  and 
hang  around  for  an  hour,  maybe,  and  I'll  meet  you 
here  an'  we'll  walk  a  ways.  Will  you?  I  got  some- 
thing to  tell  you." 

"Naw,  I  can't  to-night.    I'm  busy." 

And  then  the  steel  edge  cut.  "Buzz,  if  you  turn  me 
down  I'll  have  you  up." 

"Up?" 

"  Before  old  Colt.  I  can  fix  up  charges.  He'll  believe 
it.  Say,  he  knows  me,  Judge  Colt  does.  I  can  name 
you  an' " 


THE   TOUGH   GUY  91 

"Me!"  Sheer  amazement  rang  in  his  voice.  "Me? 
You  must  be  crazy.  I  ain't  had  anything  to  do  with 
you.  You  make  me  sick." 

"That  don't  make  any  difference.  You  can't  prove 
it.  I  told  you  I  was  crazy  about  you.  I  told  you " 

He  jerked  loose  from  her  then  and  was  off.  He  ran 
one  block.  Then,  after  a  backward  glance,  fell  into 
a  quick  walk  that  brought  him  past  the  Brill  House 
and  to  Schroeder's  drug  store  corner.  There  was  his 
crowd — Spider,  and  Red,  and  Bing,  and  Casey.  They 
took  him  literally  unto  their  breasts.  They  thumped 
him  on  the  back.  They  bestowed  on  him  the  low 
epithets  with  which  they  expressed  admiration.  Red 
worked  at  one  of  the  bleaching  vats  in  the  Hatton 
paper  mill.  The  story  of  Buzz's  fistic  triumph  had 
spread  through  the  big  plant  like  a  flame. 

"Go  on,  Buzz,  tell  'em  about  it,"  Red  urged,  now. 
"  Je's,  I  like  to  died  laughing  when  I  heard  it.  He  must 
of  looked  a  sight,  the  poor  boob.  Go  on,  Buzz,  tell 
'em  how  you  says  to  him  he  must  be  a  kind  of  delicate 
piece  of — you  know;  go  on,  tell  'em." 

Buzz  hitched  himself  up  with  a  characteristic  gesture, 
and  plunged  into  his  story.  His  audience  listened 
entranced,  interrupting  him  with  an  occasional  "Je's!" 
of  awed  admiration.  But  the  thing  seemed  to  lack  a 
certain  something.  Perhaps  Casey  put  his  finger  on 
that  something  when,  at  the  recital's  finish  he  asked: 

"Didn't  he  see  you  was  goin'  to  hit  him?" 

"No.    He  never  see  a  thing." 


92  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

Casey  ruminated  a  moment.  "You  could  of  give  him 
a  chanst  to  put  up  his  dukes, "  he  said  at  last.  A  little 
silence  fell  upon  the  group.  Honour  among  thieves. 

Buzz  shifted  uncomfortably.  "He's  a  bigger  guy 
than  I  am.  I  bet  he's  over  six  foot.  The  papers  was 
always  telling  how  he  played  football  at  that  college 
he  went  to." 

Casey  spoke  up  again.  "They  say  he  didn't  wait 
for  this  here  draft.  He's  goin'  to  Fort  Sheridan,  around 
Chicago  somewhere,  to  be  made  a  officer." 

"  Yeh,  them  rich  guys,  they  got  it  all  their  own  way," 
Spider  spoke  up,  gloomily.  "They— 

From  down  the  street  came  a  dull,  muffled  thud- 
thud-thud-thud.  Already  Chippewa,  Wisconsin,  had 
learned  to  recognise  it.  Grand  Avenue,  none  too 
crowded  on  this  mid-week  night,  pressed  to  the  curb 
to  see.  Down  the  street  they  stared  toward  the  moving 
mass  that  came  steadily  nearer.  The  listless  group  on 
the  corner  stiffened  into  something  like  interest. 

"Company  G,"  said  Red.  "I  hear  they're  leavin' 
in  a  couple  of  days." 

And  down  the  street  they  came,  thud-thud-thud, 
Company  G,  headed  for  the  new  red-brick  Armory 
for  the  building  of  which  they  had  engineered  every- 
thing from  subscription  dances  and  exhibition  drills 
to  turkey  raffles.  Chippewa  had  never  taken  Company 
G  very  seriously  until  now.  How  could  it,  when  Com- 
pany G  was  made  up  of  Willie  Kemp,  who  clerked  in 
Hassell's  shoe  store;  Fred  Garvey,  the  reporter  on  the 


THE  TOUGH   GUY  93 

Chippewa  Eagle;  Hermie  Knapp,  the  real-estate  man, 
and  Earl  Hanson  who  came  around  in  the  morning  for 
your  grocery  order. 

Thud-thud-thud-thud.  And  to  Chippewa,  standing 
at  the  curb,  quite  suddenly  these  every-day  men  and 
boys  were  transformed  into  something  remote  and 
almost  terrible.  Something  grim.  Something  sacri- 
ficial. Something  sacred. 

Thud-thud-thud-thud.      Looking  straight  ahead. 

"The  poor  boobs,"  said  Spider,  and  spat,  and 
laughed. 

The  company  passed  on  down  the  street — vanished. 
Grand  Avenue  went  its  way. 

A  little  silence  fell  upon  the  street-corner  group. 
Bing  was  the  first  to  speak. 

"They  won't  git  me  in  this  draft.  I  got  a  mother 
an'  two  kid  sisters  to  support." 

"Yeh,  a  swell  lot  of  supportin'  you  do!" 

"Who  says  I  don't!    I  can  prove  it." 

"They'll  get  me  all  right,"  said  Casey.  "I  ain't 
kickin'." 

"I'm  under  age,"  from  Red. 

Spider  said  nothing.  His  furtive  eyes  darted  here 
and  there.  Spider  was  of  age.  And  Spider  had  no 
family  to  support.  But  Spider  had  reason  to  know 
that  no  examining  board  would  pass  him  into  the 
army  of  his  country.  And  it  was  a  reason  of  which 
one  did  not  speak.  "You're  only  twenty,  ain't  you, 
Buzz?"  he  asked,  to  cover  the  gap  in  the  conversation. 


94  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

"Yeh."  Silence  feU  again.  Then,  "But  I  wouldn't 
mind  goin'.  Anything  for  a  change.  This  place  makes 
me  sick. " 

Spider  laughed.  "You  better  be  a  hero  and  go  and 
enlist" 

Buzz's  head  came  up  with  a  jerk.  "Je's,  I  never 
thought  of  that!" 

Red  struck  an  attitude,  one  hand  on  his  breast. 
"Now's  your  chanct.  Buzz,  to  save  your  country  an' 
your  flag.  Enlistment  office  's  right  over  the  Golden 
Eagle  clothing  store.  Step  up.  Don't  crowd  gents! 
This  way!" 

Buzz  was  staring  at  him,  open-mouthed.  His  gaze 
was  fixed,  tense.  Suddenly  he  seemed  to  gather  all 
his  muscles  together  as  for  a  spring.  But  he  only 
threw  his  cigarette  into  the  gutter,  yawned  elaborately, 
and  moved  away.  "S'long,"  he  said;  and  lounged 
off.  The  others  looked  after  him  a  moment,  puzzled, 
speculative.  Buzz  was  not  usually  so  laconic.  But 
evidently  he  was  leaving  with  no  further  speech. 

"I  guess  maybe  he  ain't  so  dead  sure  that  Hatton 
bunch  won't  git  him  for  this,  anyway,"  Casey  said. 
Then,  raising  his  voice:  "Coin'  home,  Buzz?" 

"Yeh." 

But  he  did  not.  If  they  had  watched  him  they 
would  have  seen  him  change  his  lounging  gait  when 
he  reached  the  corner.  They  would  have  seen  him 
stand  a  moment,  sending  a  quick  glance  this  way  and 
that,  then  turn,  retrace  his  steps  almost  at  a  run, 


THE  TOUGH   GUY  95 

and  dart  into  the  doorway  that  led  to  the  flight  of 
wooden  stairs  at  the  side  of  the  Golden  Eagle  clothing 
store. 

A  dingy  room.  A  man  at  a  bare  table.  Another 
seated  at  the  window,  his  chair  tipped  back,  his  feet 
on  the  sill,  a  pipe  between  his  teeth.  Buzz,  shambling, 
suddenly  awkward,  stood  in  the  door. 

"This  the  place  where  you  enlist?" 

The  man  at  the  table  stood  up.  The  chair  in  front 
of  the  open  window  came  down  on  all-fours. 

"Sure,"  said  the  first  man.    "What's  your  name?" 

Buzz  told  him. 

"Meet  Sergeant  Keith.  He's  a  Canadian.  Been 
through  the  whole  game." 

Five  minutes  later  Buzz's  fine  white  torso  rose 
above  his  trousers  like  a  great  pillar.  Unconsciously 
his  sagging  shoulders  had  straightened.  His  stomach 
was  held  in.  His  chest  jutted,  shelf-like.  His  ribs 
showed  through  the  pink-white  flesh. 

"Get  some  of  that  pork  off  of  him,"  observed 
Sergeant  Keith,  "and  he'll  do  in  a  couple  of  Fritzes 
before  he's  through." 

"Me!"  blurted  Buzz,  struggling  now  with  his 
shirt.  "A  couple!  Say,  you  don't  know  me.  Whaddyou 
mean,  a  couple?  I  can  lick  a  whole  regiment  of  them 
beerheads  with  one  hand  tied  behind  me  an'  my  feet 
hi  a  sack."  He  emerged  from  the  struggle  with  his 
shirt,  his  face  very  red,  his  hair  rumpled. 

Sergeant  Keith  smiled  a  grim  little  smile.     "Keep 


96  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

your  shirt  on,  kid,"  he  said,   "and  remember,  this 
isn't  a  fist  fight  you're  going  into.    It's  war." 

Buzz,  fumbling  with  his  hat,  put  his  question. 
"When — when  do  I  go?"  For  he  had  signed  his  name 
in  his  round,  boyish,  sixth-grade  scrawl. 

"To-morrow.     Now  listen  to  these  instructions." 

"T- to-morrow?"  gasped  Buzz. 

He  was  still  gasping  as  he  reached  the  street  and 
struck  out  toward  home.  To-morrow!  When  the 
Kearney  girl  again  stepped  out  of  the  tree-shadows 
he  stared  at  her  as  at  something  remote  and  trivial. 

"I  thought  you  tried  to  give  me  the  slip,  Buzz. 
Where  you  been?" 

"Never  mind  where  I've  been." 

She  fell  into  step  beside  him,  but  had  difficulty  in 
matching  his  great  strides.  She  caught  at  his  arm. 
At  that  Buzz  turned  and  stopped.  It  was  too  dark  to 
see  his  face,  but  something  in  his  voice — something 
new,  and  hard,  and  resolute — reached  even  the  choked 
and  slimy  cells  of  this  creature's  consciousness. 

"Now  looka  here.  You  beat  it.  I  got  some  thin'  on 
my  mind  to-night  and  I  can't  be  bothered  with  no 
fool  girl,  see?  Don't  get  me  sore.  I  mean  it. " 

Her  hand  dropped  away  from  his  arm.  "I  didn't 
mean  what  I  said  about  havin'  you  up,  Buzz;  honest 
t'  Gawd  I  didn't." 

"I  don't  care  what  you  meant." 
'Will  you  meet  me  to-morrow  night?     Will  you, 
Buzz?" 


THE  TOUGH   GUY  97 

"If  I'm  in  this  town  to-morrow  night  I'll  meet  you. 
Is  that  good  enough?" 

He  turned  and  strode  away.  But  she  was  after 
him.  " Where  you  goin'  to-morrow?" 

"I'm  goin'  to  war,  that's  where." 

"Yes  you  are!"  scoffed  Miss  Kearney.  Then,  at 
his  silence:  "You  didn't  go  and  do  a  fool  thing  like 
that?" 

"I  sure  did." 

"When  you  goin'?" 

"To-morrow." 

"Well,  of  all  the  big  boobs,"  sneered  Miss  Kearney; 
''what  did  you  go  and  do  that  for?" 

"Search  me"  said  Buzz,  dully.    "Search  me" 

Then  he  turned  and  went  on  toward  home,  alone. 
The  Kearney  girl's  silly,  empty  laugh  came  back 
to  him  through  the  darkness.  It  might  have  been 
called  a  scornful  laugh  if  the  Kearney  girl  had  been 
capable  of  any  emotion  so  dignified  as  scorn. 

The  family  was  still  up.  The  door  was  open  to  the 
warm  May  night.  The  Werners,  in  their  moments 
of  relaxation,  were  ^s  unbuttoned  and  highly  negligee 
as  one  of  those  group  pictures  you  see  of  the  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson  family.  Pa,  shirt-sleeved,  stocking- 
footed,  asleep  in  his  chair.  Ma's  dress  open  at  the 
front.  Minnie,  in  an  untidy  kimono,  sewing. 

On  this  flaccid  group  Buzz  burst,  bomb-like.  He 
hung  his  hat  on  the  hook,  wordlessly.  The  noise  he 
made  woke  his  father,  as  he  had  meant  that  it  should. 


98  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

There  came  a  muttered  growl  from  the  old  man. 
Buzz  leaned  against  the  stairway  door,  negligently. 
The  eyes  of  the  three  were  on  him. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "I  guess  you  won't  be  bothered 
with  me  much  longer."  Ma  Werner's  head  came  up 
sharply  at  that. 

"What  you  done,  Ernie?" 

"Enlisted." 

"Enlisted— for  what?" 

"For  the  war;  what  do  you  suppose?" 

Ma  Werner  rose  at  that,  heavily.  "Ernie!  You 
never!" 

Pa  Werner  was  wide  awake  now.  Out  of  his  memory 
of  the  old  country,  and  soldier  service  there,  he  put  his 
next  question.  "Did  you  sign  to  it?" 

"Yeh." 

"When  you  goin'?" 

"To-morrow." 

Even  Pa  Werner  gasped  at  that. 

In  families  like  the  Werners  emotion  is  rarely  ex- 
pressed. But  now,  because  of  something  in  the  stricken 
face  and  starting  eyes  of  the  woman,  and  the  open- 
mouthed  dumbfoundedness  of  the  old  man,  and  the 
sudden  tender  fearfulness  in  the  face  of  the  girl;  and 
because,  in  that  moment,  all  these  seemed  very  safe, 
and  accustomed,  and,  somehow,  dear,  Buzz  curled 
his  mouth  into  the  sneer  of  the  tough  guy  and  spoke 
out  of  the  corner  of  that  contorted  feature. 

"What  did  you  think  I  was  goin'  to  do?     Huh? 


THE  TOUGH   GUY  99 

Stick  around  here  and  take  dirt  from  the  bunch  of 
you!  Nix!  I'm  through!" 

There  was  nothing  dramatic  about  Buzz's  going. 
He  seemed  to  be  whisked  away.  One  moment  he 
was  eating  his  breakfast  at  an  unaccustomed  hour, 
in  his  best  shirt  and  trousers,  his  mother,  only  half 
understanding  even  now,  standing  over  him  with 
the  coffee  pot;  the  next  he  was  standing  with  his 
cheap  shiny  suitcase  in  his  hand.  Then  he  was  waiting 
on  the  depot  platform,  and  Hefty  Burke,  the  baggage 
man,  was  saying,  "Where  you  goin',  Buzz?" 

"  Coin'  to  fight  the  Germans." 

Hefty  had  hooted  hoarsely:  "Ya-a-as  you  are, 
you  big  bluff!" 

"Who  you  callin'  a  bluff,  you  baggage-smasher, 
you!  I'm  goin'  to  war,  I'm  tellin'  you." 

Hefty,  still  scoffing,  turned  away  to  his  work.  "Well, 
then,  I  guess  it's  as  good  as  over.  Give  old  Willie 
a  swipe  for  me,  will  you?" 

"You  bet  I  will.    Watch  me!" 

I  think  he  more  than  half  meant  it. 

And  thus  Buzz  Werner  went  to  war.  He  was  vague 
about  its  locality.  Somewhere  in  Europe.  He  was 
pretty  sure  it  was  France.  A  line  from  his  Fourth 
Grade  geography  came  back  to  him.  "The  French," 
it  had  said,  "are  a  gay  people,  fond  of  dancing  and 
light  wines." 

Well,  that  sounded  all  right. 

The  things  that  happened  to  Buzz  Werner  in  the 


ioo  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

next  twelve  months  cannot  be  detailed  here.  They 
would  require  the  space  of  what  the  publishers  call 
a  i2-mo  volume.  Buzz  himself  could  never  have 
told  you.  Things  happened  too  swiftly,  too  con- 
centratedly. 

Chicago  first.  Buzz  had  never  seen  Chicago.  Now 
that  he  saw  it,  he  hardly  believed  it.  His  first  glimpse 
of  it  left  him  cowering,  terrified.  The  noise,  the  rush, 
the  glitter,  the  grimness,  the  vastness,  were  like  blows 
upon  his  defenceless  head.  They  beat  the  braggadocio 
and  the  self-confidence  temporarily  out  of  him.  But 
only  temporarily. 

Then  came  a  camp.  A  rough,  temporary  camp 
compared  to  which  the  present  cantonments  are 
luxurious.  The  United  States  Government  took 
Buzz  Werner  by  the  slack  of  the  trousers  and  the 
slack  of  the  mind,  and,  holding  him  thus,  shook  him 
into  shape — and  into  submission.  And  eventually — 
though  it  required  months — into  an  understanding 
of  why  that  submission  was  manly,  courageous,  and 
fine.  But  before  he  learned  that  he  learned  many 
other  things.  He  learned  there  was  little  good  in 
saying,  "Aw,  g'wan!"  to  a  dapper  young  lieutenant 
if  they  clapped  you  into  the  guard-house  for  saying 
it.  There  was  little  point  to  throwing  down  your 
shovel  and  refusing  to  shovel  coal  if  they  clapped 
you  into  the  guard  house  for  doing  it;  and  made  you 
shovel  harder  than  ever  when  you  came  out.  He 
learned  what  it  was  to  rise  at  dawn  and  go  thud-thud- 


THE   TOUGH   GUY  101 

thudding  down  a  dirt  road  for  endless  weary  miles. 
He  became  an  olive-drab  unit  in  an  olive-drab  village. 
He  learned  what  it  was  to  wake  up  in  the  morning 
so  sore  and  lame  that  he  felt  as  if  he  had  been  pulled 
apart,  limb  from  limb,  during  the  night,  and  never 
put  together  again.  He  stood  out  with  a  raw  squad 
in  the  dirt  of  No  Man's  Land  between  barracks  and 
went  through  exercises  that  took  hold  of  his  great 
slack  muscles  and  welded  them  into  whip-cords.  And 
in  front  of  him,  facing  him,  stood  a  slim,  six-foot 
whipper-snapper  of  a  lieutenant,  hatless,  coatless, 
tireless,  merciless — a  creature  whom  Buzz  at  first 
thought  he  could  snap  between  thumb  and  finger — 
like  that! — who  made  life  a  hell  for  Buzz  Werner. 
Until  his  muscles  became  used  to  it. 

' '  One — two! — three !  One — two — three !  One — two — 
three!"  yelled  this  person.  And,  "/whale!  Exhale! 
/whale!  Exhale!"  till  Buzz's  lungs  were  bursting, 
his  eyes  were  starting  from  his  head,  his  chest  carried 
a  sledge  hammer  inside  it,  his  thigh-muscles  screamed, 
and  his  legs,  arms,  neck,  were  no  longer  parts  of  him, 
but  horrid  useless  burdens,  detached,  yet  clinging. 
He  learned  what  this  person  meant  when  he  shouted 
(always  with  the  rising  inflection),  "Comp'ny!  Right! 
Whup!"  Buzz  whupped  with  the  best  of  'em.  The 
whipper-snapper  seemed  tireless.  Long  after  Buzz 
felt  that  another  moment  of  it  would  kill  him  the 
lithe  young  lieutenant  would  be  leaping  about  like  a 
faun,  and  pride  kept  Buzz  going  though  he  wanted  to 


102  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

drop  with  fatigue,  and  his  shirt  and  hair  and  face 
were  wet  with  sweat. 

So  much  for  his  body.  It  soon  became  accustomed 
to  the  routine,  then  hardened.  His  mind  was  less 
pliable.  But  that,  too,  was  undergoing  a  change. 
He  found  that  the  topics  of  conversation  that  used  to 
interest  his  little  crowd  on  the  street  corner  in  Chip- 
pewa  were  not  of  much  interest,  here.  There  were 
boys  from  every  part  of  the  great  country.  And  they 
talked  of  the  places  whence  they  had  come  and  specu- 
lated about  the  places  to  which  they  were  going. 
And  Buzz  listened  and  learned.  There  was  strangely 
little  talk  about  girls.  There  usually  is  when  muscles 
and  mind  are  being  driven  to  the  utmost.  But  he 
heard  men — men  as  big  as  he — speak  openly  of  things 
that  he  had  always  sneered  at  as  soft.  After  one  of 
these  conversations  he  wrote  an  awkward,  but  signifi- 
cant scrawl  home  to  his  mother. 

"Well  Ma,"  he  wrote,  "I  guess  maybe  you  would 
like  to  hear  a  few  words  from  me.  Well  I  like  it  in 
the  army  it  is  the  life  for  me  you  bet.  I  am  feeling 
great  how  are  you  all " 

Ma  Werner  wasted  an  entire  morning  showing  it 
around  the  neighbourhood,  and  she  read  and  reread 
it  until  it  was  almost  pulp. 

Six  months  of  this.  Buzz  Werner  was  an  intelligent 
machine  composed  of  steel,  cord,  and  iron.  I  think 
he  had  forgotten  that  the  Kearney  girl  had  ever 
existed.  One  day,  after  three  months  of  camp  life,  the 


THE  TOUGH   GUY  103 

man  in  the  next  cot  had  thrown  him  a  volume  of 
Kipling.  Buzz  fingered  it,  disinterestedly.  Until 
that  moment  Kipling  had  not  existed  for  Buzz  Werner. 
After  that  moment  he  dominated  his  leisure  hours. 
The  Y.  M.  C.  A.  hut  had  many  battered  volumes 
of  this  writer.  Buzz  read  them  all. 

The  week  before  Thanksgiving  Buzz  found  himself 
on  his  way  to  New  York.  For  some  reason  unexplained 
to  him  he  was  separated  from  his  company  in  one  of 
the  great  shake-ups  performed  for  the  good  of  the 
army.  He  never  saw  them  again.  He  was  sent  straight 
to  a  New  York  camp.  When  he  beheld  his  new  lieu- 
tenant his  limbs  became  fluid,  and  his  heart  leaped 
into  his  throat,  and  his  mouth  stood  open,  and  his 
eyes  bulged.  It  was  young  Hatton — Harry  Hatton — 
whose  aristocratic  nose  he  had  punched  six  months 
before,  in  the  Hatton  Pulp  and  Paper  Mill. 

And  even  as  he  stared  young  Hatton  fixed  him 
with  his  eye,  and  then  came  over  to  him  and  said,  "It's 
aU  right,  Werner." 

Buzz  Werner  could  only  salute  with  awkward  re- 
spect, while  with  one  great  gulp  his  heart  slid  back 
into  normal  place.  He  had  not  thought  that  Hatton 
was  so  tall,  or  so  broad-shouldered,  or  so 

He  no  more  thought  of  telling  the  other  men  that 
he  had  once  knocked  this  man  down  than  he  thought 
of  knocking  him  down  again.  He  would  almost  as 
soon  have  thought  of  taking  a  punch  at  the  Presi- 
dent. 


104  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

The  day  before  Thanksgiving  Buzz  was  told  he 
might  have  a  holiday.  Also  he  was  given  an  address 
and  a  telephone  number  in  New  York  City  and  told 
that  if  he  so  desired  he  might  call  at  that  address 
and  receive  a  bountiful  Thanksgiving  dinner.  They 
were  expecting  him  there.  That  the  telephone  ex- 
change was  Murray  Hill,  and  the  street  Madison 
Avenue  meant  nothing  to  Buzz.  He  made  the  short 
trip  to  New  York,  floundered  about  the  city,  found 
every  one  willing  and  eager  to  help  him  find  the  address 
on  the  slip,  and  brought  up,  finally,  in  front  of  the 
house  on  Madison  Avenue.  It  was  a  large,  five-story 
stone  place,  and  Buzz  supposed  it  was  a  flat,  of  course. 
He  stood  off  and  surveyed  it.  Then  he  ascended  the 
steps  and  rang  the  bell.  They  must  have  been  waiting 
for  him.  The  door  was  opened  by  a  large  amiable- 
looking,  middle-aged  man  who  said,  "Well,  well! 
Come  in,  come  in,  my  boy!"  a  great  deal  as  the  folks 
in  Chippewa,  Wisconsin,  might  have  said  it.  The 
stout  old  party  also  said  he  was  glad  to  see  him  and 
Buzz  believed  it.  They  went  upstairs,  much  to  Buzz's 
surprise.  In  Buzz's  experience  upstairs  always  meant 
bedrooms.  But  in  this  case  it  meant  a  great  bright 
sitting  room,  with  books  in  it,  and  a  fireplace,  very 
cheerful.  There  were  not  a  lot  of  people  in  the  room. 
Just  a  middle-aged  woman  in  a  soft  kind  of  dress,  who 
came  to  him  without  any  fuss  and  the  first  thing  he 
knew  he  felt  acquainted.  Within  the  next  fifteen 
minutes  or  so  some  other  members  of  the  family 


THE  TOUGH   GUY  105 

seemed  to  ooze  in,  unnoticeably.  First  thing  you 
knew,  there  they  were.  They  didn't  pay  such  an 
awful  lot  of  attention  to  you.  Just  took  you  for  granted. 
A  couple  of  young  kids,  a  girl  of  fourteen,  and  a  boy 
of  sixteen  who  asked  you  easy  questions  about  the 
army  till  you  found  yourself  patronising  him.  And 
a  tall  black-haired  girl  who  made  you  think  of  the 
vamps  in  the  movies,  only  her  eyes  were  different. 
And  then,  with  a  little  rush,  a  girl  about  his  own  age, 
or  maybe  younger — he  couldn't  tell — who  came  right 
up  to  him,  and  put  out  her  hand,  and  gave  him  a  grip 
with  her  hard  little  fist,  just  like  a  boy,  and  said, 
"I'm  Joyce  Ladd." 

"Pleased  to  meetcha,"  mumbled  Buzz.  And  then 
he  found  himself  talking  to  her  quite  easily.  She  knew 
a  surprising  lot  about  the  army. 

"I've  two  brothers  over  there,"  she  said;  "And 
all  my  friends,  of  course."  He  found  out  later,  quite 
by  accident,  that  this  boyish,  but  strangely  appealing 
person  belonged  to  some  sort  of  Motor  Service  League, 
and  drove  an  automobile,  every  day,  from  eight  to 
six,  up  and  down  and  round  and  about  New  York, 
working  like  a  man  in  the  service  of  the  country. 
He  never  would  have  believed  that  the  world  held 
that  kind  of  girl. 

Then  four  other  men  in  uniform  came  in,  and  it 
turned  out  that  three  of  them  were  privates  like 
himself,  and  the  other  a  sergeant.  Their  awkward 
entrance  made  him  feel  more  than  ever  at  ease,  and 


io6  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

ten  minutes  later  they  were  all  talking  like  mad,  and 
laughing  and  joking  as  if  they  had  known  these  people 
for  years.  They  all  went  in  to  dinner.  Buzz  got  pan- 
icky when  he  thought  of  the  knives  and  forks,  but  that 
turned  out  all  right,  too,  because  they  brought  these 
as  you  needed  them.  And  besides,  the  things  they 
gave  you  to  eat  weren't  much  different  from  the 
things  you  had  for  Sunday  or  Thanksgiving  dinner 
at  home,  and  it  was  cooked  the  way  his  mother  would 
have  cooked  it — even  better,  perhaps.  And  lots  of 
it.  And  paper  snappers  and  caps  and  things,  and 
much  laughter  and  talk.  And  Buzz  Werner,  who  had 
never  been  shown  any  respect  or  deference  in  his 
life,  was  asked,  politely,  his  opinion  of  the  war,  and 
the  army,  and  when  he  thought  it  all  would  end; 
and  he  told  them,  politely,  too. 

After  dinner  Mrs.  Ladd  said,  "What  would  you  boys 
like  to  do?  Would  you  like  to  drive  around  the  city 
and  see  New  York?  Or  would  you  like  to  go  to  a 
matinee,  or  a  picture  show?  Or  do  you  want  to  stay 
here?  Some  of  Joyce's  girl  friends  are  coming  in 
a  little  later." 

And  Buzz  found  himself  saying,  stumblingly,  "I — 
I'd  kind  of  rather  stay  and  talk  with  the  girls."  Buzz, 
the  tough  guy,  blushing  like  a  shy  schoolboy. 

They  did  not  even  laugh  at  that.  They  just  looked 
as  if  they  understood  that  you  missed  girls  at  camp. 
Mrs.  Ladd  came  over  to  him  and  put  her  hand  on  his 
arm  and  said,  "That's  splendid.  We'll  all  go  up  to 


THE  TOUGH   GUY  107 

the  ballroom  and  dance."  And  they  did.  And  Buzz, 
who  had  learned  to  dance  at  places  like  Kearney 's 
saloon,  and  at  the  mill  shindigs,  glided  expertly  about 
with  Joyce  Ladd  of  Madison  Avenue,  and  found 
himself  seated  in  a  great  cushioned  window-seat, 
talking  with  her  about  Kipling.  It  was  like  talking 
to  another  fellow,  almost,  only  it  had  a  thrill  in  it. 
She  said  such  comic  things.  And  when  she  laughed 
she  threw  back  her  head  and  your  eyes  were  dazzled 
by  her  slender  white  throat.  They  all  stayed  for  supper. 
And  when  they  left  Mrs.  Ladd  and  Joyce  handed  them 
packages  that,  later,  turned  out  to  be  cigarettes,  and 
chocolate,  and  books,  and  soap,  and  knitted  things  and 
a  wallet.  And  when  Buzz  opened  the  wallet  and  found, 
with  relief,  that  there  was  no  money  in  it  he  knew  that 
he  had  met  and  mingled  with  American  royalty  as  its 
equal. 

Three  days  later  he  sailed  for  France. 

Buzz  Werner,  the  Chippewa  tough  guy,  in  Paris! 
Buzz  Werner  at  Napoleon's  tomb,  that  glorious  white 
marble  poem.  Buzz  Werner  in  the  Place  de  la  Con- 
corde. Eating  at  funny  little  Paris  restaurants. 

Then  a  new  life.  Life  in  a  drab,  rain-soaked,  mud- 
choked  little  French  village,  sleeping  in  barns,  or 
stables,  or  hen  coops.  If  the  French  were  "a  gay 
people,  fond  of  dancing  and  light  wines,"  he'd  like  to 
know  where  it  came  in!  Nothing  but  drill  and  mud, 
mud  and  drill,  and  rain,  rain,  rain!  And  old  women 
with  tragic  faces,  and  young  women  with  old  eyes. 


io8  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

And  unbelievable  stories  of  courage  and  sacrifice. 
And  more  rain,  and  more  mud,  and  more  drill.  And 
then — into  it! 

Into  it  with  both  feet.  Living  in  the  trenches. 
Back  home,  in  camp,  they  had  refused  to  take  the 
trenches  seriously.  They  had  played  in  them  as 
children  play  bear  under  the  piano  or  table,  and  had 
refused  to  keep  their  heads  down.  But  Buzz  learned 
to  keep  his  down  now,  quickly  enough.  A  first  terri- 
fying stretch  of  this,  then  back  to  the  rear  again.  More 
mud  and  drill.  Marches  so  long  and  arduous  that 
walking  was  no  longer  walking  but  a  dreadful  mechani- 
cal motion.  He  learned  what  thirst  was,  did  Buzz. 
He  learned  what  it  was  to  be  obliged  to  keep  your  mind 
off  the  thought  of  pails  of  water — pails  that  slopped 
and  brimmed  over,  so  that  you  could  put  your  head 
into  them  and  lip  around  like  a  horse. 

Then  back  into  the  trenches.  And  finally,  over 
the  top!  Very  little  memory  of  what  happened  after 
that.  A  rush.  Trampling  over  soft  heaps  that  writhed. 
Some  one  yelling  like  an  Indian  with  a  voice  some- 
how like  his  own.  The  German  trench  reached.  At 
them  with  his  bayonet!  He  remembered,  automati- 
cally, how  his  manual  had  taught  him  to  jerk  out 
the  steel,  after  you  had  driven  it  home.  He  did  it. 
Into  the  very  trench  itself.  A  great  six-foot  German 
struggling  with  a  slim  figure  that  Buzz  somehow 
recognised  as  his  lieutenant,  Hatton.  A  leap  at  him, 
Jike  an  enraged  dog: 


THE   TOUGH   GUY  109 

"GVan!  who  you  shoving  you  big  slob  you" 
yelled  Buzz  (I  regret  to  say).  And  he  thrust  at  him, 
and  through  him.  The  man  released  his  grappling 
hold  of  Hatton's  throat,  and  grunted,  and  sat  down. 
And  Buzz  laughed.  And  the  two  went  on,  Buzz  behind 
his  lieutenant,  and  then  something  smote  his  thigh, 
and  he  too  sat  down.  The  dying  German  had  thrown 
his  last  bomb,  and  it  had  struck  home. 

Buzz  Werner  would  never  again  do  a  double  shuffle 
on  Schroeder's  drug-store  corner. 

Hospital  days.  Hospital  nights.  A  wheel  chair. 
Crutches.  Home. 

It  was  May  once  more  when  Buzz  Werner's  train 
came  into  the  little  red-brick  depot  at  Chippewa, 
Wisconsin.  Buzz,  spick  and  span  in  his  uniform, 
looked  down  rather  nervously,  and  yet  with  a  certain 
pride  at  his  left  leg.  When  he  sat  down  you  couldn't 
tell  which  was  the  real  one.  As  the  train  pulled  in  at 
the  Chippewa  Junction,  just  before  reaching  the  town 
proper,  there  was  old  Bart  Ochsner  ringing  the  bell 
for  dinner  at  the  Junction  eating  house.  Well,  for 
the  love  of  Mike!  Wouldn't  that  make  you  laugh. 
Ringing  that  bell,  just  like  always,  as  if  nothing  had 
happened  in  the  last  year!  Buzz  leaned  against  the 
window,  to  see.  There  was  some  commotion  in  the 
train  and  some  one  spoke  his  name.  Buzz  turned,  and 
there  stood  Old  Man  Hatton,  and  a  lot  of  others,  and 
he  seemed  to  be  making  a  speech,  and  kind  of  crying, 
though  that  couldn't  be  possible.  And  his  father  was 


no  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

there,  very  clean  and  shaved  and  queer.  Buzz  caught 
words  about  bravery,  and  Chippewa's  pride,  and 
he  was  fussed  to  death,  and  glad  when  the  train  pulled 
in  at  the  Chippewa  station.  But  there  the  commotion 
was  worse  than  ever.  There  was  a  band,  playing  away 
like  mad.  Buzz's  great  hands  grown  very  white, 
were  fidgeting  at  his  uniform  buttons,  and  at  the 
stripe  on  his  sleeve,  and  the  medal  on  his  breast.  They 
wouldn't  let  him  carry  a  thing,  and  when  he  came  out 
on  the  car  platform  to  descend  there  went  up  a 
great  sound  that  was  half  roar  and  half  scream.  Buzz 
Werner  was  the  first  of  Chippewa's  men  to  come 
back. 

After  that  it  was  rather  hazy.  There  was  his  mother. 
His  sister  Minnie,  too.  He  even  saw  the  Kearney  girl, 
with  her  loose  red  mouth,  and  her  silly  eyes,  and  she 
was  as  a  strange  woman  to  him.  He  was  in  Hatton's 
glittering  automobile,  being  driven  down  Grand  Ave- 
nue. There  were  speeches,  and  a  dinner,  and,  later, 
when  he  was  allowed  to  go  home,  rather  white,  a  steady 
stream  of  people  pouring  in  and  out  of  the  house 
all  day.  That  night,  when  he  limped  up  the  stairs 
to  his  hot  little  room  under  the  roof  he  was  dazed, 
spent,  and  not  so  very  happy. 

Next  morning,  though,  he  felt  more  himself,  and 
inclined  to  joke.  And  then  there  was  a  talk  with 
old  Man  Hatton;  a  talk  that  left  Buzz  somewhat 
numb,  and  the  family  breathless. 

Visitors  again,  all  that  afternoon. 


THE  TOUGH   GUY  in 

After  supper  he  carried  water  for  the  garden,  against 
his  mother's  outraged  protests. 

"What'll  folks  think  1"  she  said,  "you  carryin' 
water  for  me?" 

Afterward  he  took  his  smart  visored  cap  off  the  hook 
and  limped  down  town,  his  boots  and  leggings  and 
uniform  very  spick  and  span  from  Ma  Werner's  expert 
brushing  and  rubbing.  She  refused  to  let  Buzz  touch 
them,  although  he  tried  to  tell  her  that  he  had  done 
that  job  for  a  year. 

At  the  corner  of  Grand  and  Outagamie,  in  front  of 
Schroeder's  drug  store,  stood  what  was  left  of  the  gang, 
and  some  new  members  who  had  come  during  the  year 
that  had  passed.  Buzz  knew  them  all. 

They  greeted  him  at  first  with  a  mixture  of  shyness 
and  resentment.  They  eyed  his  leg,  and  his  uniform, 
and  the  metal  and  ribbon  thing  that  hung  at  his  breast. 
Bing  and  Red  and  Spider  were  there.  Casey  was  gone. 

Finally  Spider  spat  and  said,  "G'wan,  Buzz,  give  us 
your  spiel  about  how  you  saved  young  Hatton — the 
simp!" 

"  Who  says  he's  a  simp?"  inquired  Buzz,  very  quietly. 
But  there  was  a  look  about  his  jaw. 

"Well — anyway — the  papers  was  full  of  how  you  was 
a  hero.  Say,  is  that  right  that  old  Hatton' s  goin' 
to  send  you  to  college?  Huh?  Je's!" 

"  Yeh,"  chorused  the  others,  " go  on,  Buzz.   Tell  us." 

Red  put  his  question.  "Tell  us  about  the  fightin', 
Buzz.  Is  it  like  they  say?" 


H2  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

It  was  Buzz  Werner's  great  moment.  He  had  pic- 
tured it  a  thousand  times  in  his  mind  as  he  lay  in  the 
wet  trenches,  as  he  plodded  the  muddy  French  roads, 
as  he  reclined  in  his  wheel  chair  in  the  hospital  garden. 
He  had  them  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand.  His  eyes 
brightened.  He  looked  at  the  faces  so  eagerly  fixed 
on  his  utterance. 

"G'wan,  Buzz,"  they  urged. 

Buzz  opened  his  lips  and  the  words  he  used  were 
the  words  he  might  have  used  a  year  before,  as  to 
choice.  "There's  no  thin'  to  tell.  A  guy  didn't  have 
no  time  to  be  scairt.  Everything  kind  of  come  at 
once,  and  you  got  yours,  or  either  you  didn't.  That's 
all  there  was  to  it.  Je's,  it  was  fierce!" 

They  waited.  No  thing  more.  "  Yeh,  but  tell  us— 

And  suddenly  Buzz  turned  away.  The  little  group 
about  him  fell  back,  respectfully.  Something  in  his 
face,  perhaps.  A  quietness,  a  new  dignity. 

"S'long,  boys,"  he  said.  And  limped  off,  toward 
home. 

And  in  that  moment  Buzz,  the  bully  and  braggart, 
vanished  forever.  And  in  his  place — head  high,  chest 
up,  eyes  clear — limped  Ernest  Werner,  the  man. 


A 


IV 

THE    ELDEST 

Self  -Complacent  Young  Cub  leaned  an 
elbow  against  the  mantel  as  you've  seen  it  done 
in  English  plays,  and  blew  a  practically  perfect  smoke- 
ring.  It  hurtled  toward  me  like  a  discus. 

"  Trouble  with  your  stuff,"  he  began  at  once  (we 
had  just  been  introduced),  "is  that  it  lacks  plot.  Been 
meaning  to  meet  and  tell  you  that  for  a  long  time. 
Your  characterization's  all  right,  and  your  dialogue. 
In  fact,  I  think  they're  good.  But  your  stuff  lacks 
raison  d'etre  —  if  you  know  what  I  mean. 

"But"  —  in  feeble  self-defence  —  "people's  insides  are 
often  so  much  more  interesting  than  their  outsides; 
that  which  they  think  or  feel  so  much  more  thrilling 
than  anything  they  actually  do.  Bennett  —  Wells  -  ' 

"Rot!"  remarked  the  young  cub,  briskly.  "Plot's 
the  thing." 

There  is  no  plot  to  this  because  there  is  no  plot  to 
Rose.  There  never  was.  There  never  will  be.  Com- 
pared to  the  drab  monotony  of  Rose's  existence  a 
desert  waste  is  as  thrilling  as  a  five-reel  film. 

They  had  called  her  Rose,  fatuously,  as  parents 


ii4  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

do  their  first-born  girl.  No  doubt  she  had  been  nor- 
mally pink  and  white  and  velvety.  It  is  a  risky  thing 
to  do,  however.  Think  back  hastily  on  the  Roses 
you  know.  Don't  you  find  a  startling  majority  still 
clinging,  sere  and  withered,  to  the  family  bush? 

In  Chicago,  Illinois,  a  city  of  two  millions  (or  is  it 
three?),  there  are  women  whose  lives  are  as  remote,  as 
grey,  as  unrelated  to  the  world  about  them  as  is  the 
life  of  a  Georgia  cracker's  woman-drudge.  Rose  was 
one  of  these.  An  unwed  woman,  grown  heavy  about 
the  hips  and  arms,  as  houseworking  women  do,  though 
they  eat  but  little,  moving  dully  about  the  six-room 
flat  on  Sangamon  Street,  Rose  was  as  much  a  slave 
as  any  black  wench  of  plantation  days. 

There  was  the  treadmill  of  endless  dishes,  dirtied 
as  fast  as  cleansed;  there  were  beds,  and  beds,  and 
beds;  gravies  and  soups  and  stews.  And  always  the 
querulous  voice  of  the  sick  woman  in  the  front  bed- 
room demanding  another  hot  water  bag.  Rose's  day 
was  punctuated  by  hot  water  bags.  They  dotted 
her  waking  hours.  She  filled  hot  water  bags  auto- 
matically, like  a  machine — water  half-way  to  the 
top,  then  one  hand  clutching  the  bag's  slippery  middle 
while  the  other,  with  a  deft  twist,  ejected  the  air 
within;  a  quick  twirl  of  the  metal  stopper,  the  bag 
released,  squirming,  and,  finally,  its  plump  and  rufous 
cheeks  wiped  dry. 

"  Is  that  too  hot  for  you,  Ma?  Where'd  you  want  it — 
your  head  or  your  feet?" 


THE   ELDEST  115 

A  spinster  nearing  forty,  living  thus,  must  have 
her  memories — one  precious  memory,  at  least — or  she 
dies.  Rose  had  hers.  She  hugged  it,  close.  The  L 
trains  roared  by,  not  thirty  feet  from  her  kitchen 
door.  Alley  and  yard  and  street  sent  up  their  noises 
to  her.  The  life  of  Chicago's  millions  yelped  at  her 
heels.  On  Rose's  face  was  the  vague,  mute  look  of 
the  woman  whose  days  are  spent  indoors,  at  sordid 
tasks. 

At  six-thirty  every  night  that  look  lifted,  for  an 
hour.  At  six-thirty  they  came  home — Floss,  and 
Al,  and  Pa — their  faces  stamped  with  the  marks 
that  come  from  a  day  spent  in  shop  and  factory. 
They  brought  with  them  the  crumbs  and  husks  of 
the  day's  happenings,  and  these  they  flung  carelessly 
before  the  life-starved  Rose  and  she  ate  them,  grate- 
fully. 

They  came  in  with  a  rush,  hungry,  fagged, grimed, 
imperious,  smelling  of  the  city.  There  was  a  slamming 
of  doors,  a  banging  of  drawers,  a  clatter  of  tongues, 
quarrelling,  laughter.  A  brief  visit  to  the  sick  woman's 
room.  The  thin,  complaining  voice  reciting  its  tale  of 
the  day's  discomfort  and  pain.  Then  supper. 

"Guess  who  I  waited  on  to-day!"  Floss  might 
demand. 

Rose,  dishing  up,  would  pause,  interested.   "Who?" 

"Gladys  Moraine!  I  knew  her  the  minute  she 
came  down  the  aisle.  I  saw  her  last  year  when  she 
was  playing  in  'His  Wives.'  She's  prettier  off  than  on, 


n6  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

I  think.  I  waited  on  her,  and  the  other  girls  were 
wild.  She  bought  a  dozen  pairs  of  white  kids,  and 
made  me  give  'em  to  her  huge,  so  she  could  shove 
her  hand  right  into  'em,  like  a  man  does.  Two  sizes 
too  big.  All  the  swells  wear  'em  that  way.  And  only 
one  ring — an  emerald  the  size  of  a  dime." 

"What'd  she  wear?"  Rose's  dull  face  was  almost 
animated. 

"Ah  yes!"  in  a  dreamy  falsetto  from  Al,  "what  did 
she  wear?" 

"Oh,  shut  up,  Al!  Just  a  suit,  kind  of  plain,  and 
yet  you'd  notice  it.  And  sables !  And  a  Gladys  Moraine 
hat.  Everything  quiet,  and  plain,  and  dark;  and  yet 
she  looked  like  a  million  dollars.  I  felt  like  a  roach 
while  I  was  waiting  on  her,  though  she  was  awfully 
sweet  to  me." 

Or  perhaps  Al,  the  eel-like,  would  descend  from 
his  heights  to  mingle  a  brief  moment  in  the  family 
talk.  Al  clerked  in  the  National  Cigar  Company's 
store  at  Clark  and  Madison.  His  was  the  wisdom  of 
the  snake,  the  weasel,  and  the  sphinx.  A  strangely 
silent  young  man,  this  Al,  thin-lipped,  smooth-cheeked, 
perfumed.  Slim  of  waist,  flat  of  hip,  narrow  of  shoulder, 
his  was  the  figure  of  the  born  fox-trotter.  He  walked 
lightly,  on  the  balls  of  his  feet,  like  an  Indian,  but 
without  the  Indian's  dignity. 

"Some  excitement  ourselves,  to-day,  down  at  the 
store,  believe  me.  The  Old  Man's  son  started  in  to 
learn  the  retail  selling  end  of  the  business.  Back  of 


THE   ELDEST  117 

the  showcase  with  the  rest  of  us,  waiting  on  trade, 
and  looking  like  a  Yale  yell." 

Pa  would  put  down  his  paper  to  stare  over  his 
reading  specs  at  Al. 

"Mannheim's  son!   The  president!" 

"Yep!  And  I  guess  he  loves  it,  huh?  The  Old 
Man  wants  him  to  learn  the  business  from  the  ground 
up.  I'll  bet  he'll  never  get  higher  than  the  first  floor. 
To-day  he  went  out  to  lunch  at  one  and  never  shows 
up  again  till  four.  Wears  English  collars,  and  smokes 
a  brand  of  cigarettes  we  don't  carry." 

Thus  was  the  world  brought  to  Rose.  Her  sallow 
cheek  would  show  a  faint  hint  of  colour  as  she  sipped 
her  tea. 

At  six-thirty  on  a  Monday  morning  in  late  April 
(remember,  nothing's  going  to  happen)  Rose  smothered 
her  alarm  clock  at  the  first  warning  snarl.  She  was 
wide-awake  at  once,  as  are  those  whose  yesterdays, 
to-days  and  to-morrows  are  all  alike.  Rose  never 
opened  her  eyes  to  the  dim,  tantalising  half-conscious- 
ness of  a  something  delightful  or  a  something  harrowing 
in  store  for  her  that  day.  For  one  to  whom  the  wash- 
woman's Tuesday  visitation  is  the  event  of  the  week, 
and  in  whose  bosom  the  delivery  boy's  hoarse  "Groc- 
rees!"  as  he  hurls  soap  and  cabbage  on  the  kitchen 
table,  arouses  a  wild  flurry,  there  can  be  very  little 
thrill  on  awakening. 

Rose  slept  on  the  davenport-couch  in  the  sitting- 
room.  *That  fact  in  itself  fixes  her  status  in  the  family. 


n8  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

This  Monday  morning  she  opened  her  eyes  with  what 
might  be  called  a  start  if  Rose  were  any  other  sort 
of  heroine.  Something  had  happened,  or  was  happen- 
ing. It  wasn't  the  six  o'clock  steam  hissing  in  the 
radiator.  She  was  accustomed  to  that.  The  rattle 
of  the  L  trains,  and  the  milkman's  artillery  disturbed 
her  as  little  as  does  the  chirping  of  the  birds  the  farmer's 
daughter.  A  sensation  new,  yet  familiar;  delicious, 
yet  painful,  held  her.  She  groped  to  define  it,  lying 
there.  Her  gaze,  wandering  over  the  expanse  of  the 
grey  woollen  blanket,  fixed  upon  a  small  black  object 
trembling  there.  The  knowledge  that  came  to  her 
then  had  come,  many  weeks  before,  in  a  hundred 
subtle  and  exquisite  ways,  to  those  who  dwell  in  the 
open  places.  Rose's  eyes  narrowed  craftily.  Craftily, 
stealthily,  she  sat  up,  one  hand  raised.  Her  eyes 
still  fixed  on  the  quivering  spot,  the  hand  descended, 
lightning-quick.  But  not  quickly  enough.  The  black 
spot  vanished.  It  sped  toward  the  open  window. 
Through  that  window  there  came  a  balmy  softness 
made  up  of  Lake  Michigan  zephyr,  and  stock- 
yards smell,  and  distant  budding  things.  Rose  had 
failed  to  swat  the  first  fly  of  the  season.  Spring  had 
come. 

As  she  got  out  of  bed  and  thud-thudded  across  the 
room  on  her  heels  to  shut  the  window  she  glanced  out 
into  the  quiet  street.  Her  city  eyes,  untrained  to 
nature's  hints,  failed  to  notice  that  the  scraggy,  smoke- 
dwarfed  oak  that  sprang,  somehow,  miraculously, 


THE   ELDEST  119 

from  the  mangey  little  dirt-plot  in  front  of  the  building 
had  developed  surprising  things  all  over  its  scrawny 
branches  overnight.  But  she  did  see  that  the  front 
windows  of  the  flat  building  across  the  way  were  bare 
of  the  Chicago-grey  lace  curtains  that  had  hung  there 
the  day  before.  House  cleaning!  Well,  most  decidedly 
spring  had  come. 

Rose  was  the  household's  Aurora.  Following  the 
donning  of  her  limp  and  obscure  garments  it  was  Rose's 
daily  duty  to  tear  the  silent  family  from  its  slumbers. 
Ma  was  always  awake,  her  sick  eyes  fixed  hopefully  on 
the  door.  For  fourteen  years  it  had  been  the  same. 

"  Sleeping?" 

"Sleeping!    I  haven't  closed  an  eye  all  night." 

Rose  had  learned  not  to  dispute  that  statement. 

"It's  spring  out!  I'm  going  to  clean  the  closets  and 
the  bureau  drawers  to-day.  I'll  have  your  coffee  in 
a  jiffy.  Do  you  feel  like  getting  up  and  sitting  out 
on  the  back  porch,  toward  noon,  maybe?" 

On  her  way  kitchenward  she  stopped  for  a  sharp 
tattoo  at  the  door  of  the  room  in  which  Pa  and  Al 
slept.  A  sleepy  grunt  of  remonstrance  rewarded  her. 
She  came  to  Floss's  door,  turned  the  knob  softly, 
peered  in.  Floss  was  sleeping  as  twenty  sleeps,  deeply, 
dreamlessly,  one  slim  bare  arm  outflung,  the  lashes 
resting  ever  so  lightly  on  the  delicate  curve  of  cheek. 
As  she  lay  there  asleep  in  her  disordered  bedroom, 
her  clothes  strewing  chair,  dresser,  floor,  Floss's 
tastes,  mental  equipment,  spiritual  make-up,  inner- 


I2o  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

most  thoughts,  were  as  plainly  to  be  read  by  the  ob- 
server as  though  she  had  been  scientifically  charted 
by  a  psycho-analyst,  a  metaphysician  and  her  dearest 
girl  friend. 

"Floss!  Floss,  honey!  Quarter  to  seven !"  Floss 
stirred,  moaned  faintly,  dropped  into  sleep  again. 

Fifteen  minutes  later,  the  table  set,  the  coffee  sim- 
mering, the  morning  paper  brought  from  the  back  porch 
to  Ma,  Rose  had  heard  none  of  the  sounds  that  pro- 
claimed the  family  astir — the  banging  of  drawers,  the 
rush  of  running  water,  the  slap  of  slippered  feet.  A 
peep  of  enquiry  into  the  depths  of  the  coffee  pot,  the 
gas  turned  to  a  circle  of  blue  beads,  and  she  was  down 
the  hall  to  sound  the  second  alarm. 

"Floss,  you  know  if  Al  once  gets  into  the  bathroom!" 
Floss  sat  up  in  bed,  her  eyes  still  closed.  She  made 
little  clucking  sounds  with  her  tongue  and  lips,  as  a 
baby  does  when  it  wakes.  Drugged  with  sleep,  hair 
tousled,  muscles  sagging,  at  seven  o'clock  in  the 
morning,  the  most  trying  hour  in  the  day  for  a  woman, 
Floss  was  still  triumphantly  pretty.  She  had  on  one 
of  those  absurd  pink  muslin  nightgowns,  artfully 
designed  to  look  like  crepe  de  chine.  You've  seen 
them  rosily  displayed  in  the  cheaper  shop  windows, 
marked  ninety-eight  cents,  and  you  may  have  won- 
dered who  might  buy  them,  forgetting  that  there  is 
an  imitation  mind  for  every  imitation  article  in  the 
world. 

Rose  stooped,  picked  up  a  pair  of  silk  stockings 


THE   ELDEST  121 

from  the  floor,  and  ran  an  investigating  hand  through 
to  heel  and  toe.  She  plucked  a  soiled  pink  blouse 
off  the  back  of  a  chair,  eyed  it  critically,  and  tucked 
it  under  her  arm  with  the  stockings. 

"Did  you  have  a  good  time  last  night?" 

Floss  yawned  elaborately,  stretched  her  slim  arms 
high  above  her  head;  then,  with  a  desperate  effort, 
flung  back  the  bed-clothes,  swung  her  legs  over  the 
side  of  the  bed  and  slipped  her  toes  into  the  shabby, 
pomponed  slippers  that  lay  on  the  floor. 

"I  say,  did  you  have  a  g ' 

"Oh  Lord,  I  don't  know!  I  guess  so,"  snapped 
Floss.  Temperamentally,  Floss  was  not  at  her  best 
at  seven  o'clock  on  Monday  morning.  Rose  did  not 
pursue  the  subject.  She  tried  another  tack. 

"It's  as  mild  as  summer  out.  I  see  the  Werners 
and  the  Burkes  are  housecleaning.  I  thought  I'd 
start  to-day  with  the  closets,-  and  the  bureau  drawers. 
You  could  wear  your  blue  this  morning,  if  it  was 
pressed. " 

Floss  yawned  again,  disinterestedly,  and  folded  her 
kimono  about  her. 

"Go  as  far  as  you  like.  Only  don't  put  things  back 
in  my  closet  so's  I  can't  ever  find  'em  again.  I  wish 
you'd  press  that  blue  skirt.  And  wash  out  the  Georgette 
crepe  waist.  I  might  need  it." 

The  blouse,  and  skirt,  and  stockings  under  her  arm, 
Rose  went  back  to  the  kitchen  to  prepare  her  mother's 
breakfast  tray.  Wafted  back  to  her  came  the  acrid 


122  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

odour  of  Pa's  matutinal  pipe,  and  the  accustomed 
bickering  between  Al  and  Floss  over  the  possession 
of  the  bathroom. 

"What  do  you  think  this  is,  anyway?  A  Turkish 
bath?" 

"Shave  in  your  own  room!" 

Between  Floss  and  Al  there  existed  a  feud  that 
lifted  only  when  a  third  member  of  the  family  turned 
against  either  of  them.  Immediately  they  about- 
faced  and  stood  united  against  the  offender. 

Pa  was  the  first  to  demand  breakfast,  as  always. 
Very  neat,  was  Pa,  and  fussy,  and  strangely  young 
looking  to  be  the  husband  of  the  grey-haired,  parch- 
ment-skinned woman  who  lay  in  the  front  bedroom. 
Pa  had  two  manias:  the  movies,  and  a  passion  for 
purchasing  new  and  complicated  household  utensils 
— cream-whippers,  egg-beaters,  window-clamps,  lemon- 
squeezers,  silver-polishers.  He  haunted  department 
store  basements  in  search  of  them. 

He  opened  his  paper  now  and  glanced  at  the  head- 
lines and  at  the  Monday  morning  ads.  "I  see  the 
Fair's  got  a  spring  housecleaning  sale.  They  advertise 
a  new  kind  of  extension  curtain  rod.  And  Scouro, 
three  cakes  for  a  dime." 

"If  you  waste  one  cent  more  on  truck  like  that," 
Rose  protested,  placing  his  breakfast  before  him,  "when 
half  the  time  I  can't  make  the  housekeeping  money 
last  through  the  week!" 

"Your  ma  did  it" 


THE   ELDEST  123 

"  Fourteen  years  ago  liver  wasn't  thirty-two  cents 
a  pound/'  retorted  Rose,  "and  besides " 

" Scramble  'em!"  yelled  Al,  from  the  bedroom,  by 
way  of  warning. 

There  was  very  little  talk  after  that.  The  energies 
of  three  of  them  were  directed  toward  reaching 
the  waiting  desk  or  counter  on  time.  The  energy  of 
one  toward  making  that  accomplishment  easy.  The 
front  door  slammed  once — that  was  Pa,  on  his  way; 
slammed  again — Al.  Floss  rushed  into  the  dining- 
room  fastening  the  waist-band  of  her  skirt,  her  hat 
already  on.  Rose  always  had  a  rather  special  break- 
fast for  Floss.  Floss  posed  as  being  a  rather  special 
person.  She  always  breakfasted  last,  and  late.  Floss's 
was  a  fastidiousness  which  shrinks  at  badly  served 
food,  a  spotted  table-cloth,  or  a  last  year's  hat,  while 
it  overlooks  a  rent  in  an  undergarment  or  the  accumu- 
lated dust  in  a  hairbrush.  Her  blouse  was  of  the 
sheerest.  Her  hair  shone  in  waves  about  her  delicate 
cheeks.  She  ate  her  orange,  and  sipped  her  very 
special  coffee,  and  made  a  little  face  over  her 
egg  that  had  been  shirred  in  the  oven  or  in  some  way 
highly  specialised.  Then  the  front  door  slammed 
again — a  semi-slam,  this  time.  Floss  never  did  quite 
close  a  door.  Rose  followed  her  down  the  hall,  shut 
and  bolted  it,  Chicago  fashion.  The  sick  woman  in 
the  front  bedroom  had  dropped  into  one  of  her  fitful 
morning  dozes.  At  eight  o'clock  the  little  flat  was 
very  still. 


124  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

If  you  knew  nothing  about  Rose;  if  you  had  not 
already  been  told  that  she  slept  on  the  sitting-room 
davenport;  that  she  was  taken  for  granted  as  the 
family  drudge;  that  she  was,  in  that  household,  merely 
an  intelligent  machine  that  made  beds,  fried  eggs, 
filled  hot  water  bags,  you  would  get  a  characterization 
of  her  from  this:  She  was  the  sort  of  person  who  never 
has  a  closet  or  bureau  drawer  all  her  own.  Her  few 
and  negligible  garments  hung  apologetically  in  obscure 
corners  of  closets  dedicated  to  her  sister's  wardrobe 
or  her  brother's,  or  her  spruce  and  fussy  old  father's. 
Vague  personal  belongings,  such  as  combings,  hand- 
kerchiefs, a  spectacle  case,  a  hairbrush,  were  found 
tucked  away  in  a  desk  pigeon-hole,  a  table  drawer, 
or  on  the  top  shelf  in  the  bathroom. 

As  she  pulled  the  disfiguring  blue  gingham  dust-cap 
over  her  hair  now,  and  rolled  her  sleeves  to  her  elbows, 
you  would  never  have  dreamed  that  Rose  was  embark- 
ing upon  her  great  adventure.  You  would  never  have 
guessed  that  the  semi-yearly  closet  cleaning  was  to 
give  to  Rose  a  thrill  as  delicious  as  it  was  exquisitely 
painful.  But  Rose  knew.  And  so  she  teased  herself, 
and  tried  not  to  think  of  the  pasteboard  box  on  the 
shelf  in  the  hall  closet,  under  the  pile  of  reserve  blankets, 
and  told  herself  that  she  would  leave  that  closet  until 
the  last,  when  she  would  have  to  hurry  over  it. 

When  you  clean  closets  and  bureau  drawers 
thoroughly  you  have  to  carry  things  out  to  the 


THE   ELDEST  125 

back  porch  and  flap  them.  Rose  was  that  sort  of 
housekeeper.  She  leaned  over  the  porch  railing  and 
flapped  things,  so  that  the  dust  motes  spun  and  swirled 
in  the  sunshine.  Rose's  arms  worked  up  and  down 
energetically,  then  less  energetically,  finally  ceased 
their  motion  altogether.  She  leaned  idle  elbows  on 
the  porch  railing  and  gazed  down  into  the  yard  below 
with  a  look  in  her  eyes  such  as  no  squalid  Chicago 
back  yard,  with  its  dusty  debris,  could  summon,  even 
in  spring-time. 

The  woman  next  door  came  out  on  her  back  porch 
that  adjoined  Rose's.  The  day  seemed  to  have  her 
in  its  spell,  too,  for  in  her  hand  was  something  woolly 
and  wintry,  and  she  began  to  flap  it  about  as  Rose 
had  done.  She  had  lived  next  door  since  October, 
had  that  woman,  but  the  two  had  never  exchanged 
a  word,  true  to  the  traditions  of  their  city  training. 
Rose  had  her  doubts  of  the  woman  next  door.  She 
kept  a  toy  dog  which  she  aired  afternoons,  and  her 
kimonos  were  florid  and  numerous.  Now,  as  the 
eyes  of  the  two  women  met,  Rose  found  herself  saying, 
"Looks  like  summer." 

The  woman  next  door  caught  the  scrap  of  con- 
versation eagerly,  hungrily.  "It  certainly  does!  Makes 
me  feel  like  new  clothes,  and  housecleaning." 

"I  started  to-day!"    said  Rose,  triumphantly. 

"Not  already!"  gasped  the  woman  next  door,  with 
the  chagrin  that  only  a  woman  knows  who  has  let  May 
steal  upon  her  unawares. 


126  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

From  far  down  the  alley  sounded  a  chant,  drawing 
nearer  and  nearer,  until  there  shambled  into  view  a 
decrepit  horse  drawing  a  dilapidated  huckster's  cart. 
Perched  on  the  seat  was  a  Greek  who  turned  his  dusky 
face  up  toward  the  two  women  leaning  over  the  porch 
railings.  "Rhubarb,  leddy.  Fresh  rhubarb!" 

"My  folks  don't  care  for  rhubarb  sauce,"  Rose  told 
the  woman  next  door. 

"It  makes  the  worst  pie  in  the  world,"  the  woman 
confided  to  Rose. 

Whereupon  each  bought  a  bunch  of  the  succulent 
green  and  red  stalks.  It  was  their  offering  at  the 
season's  shrine. 

Rose  flung  the  rhubarb  on  the  kitchen  table,  pulled 
her  dust-cap  more  firmly  about  her  ears,  and  hurried 
back  to  the  disorder  of  Floss's  dim  little  bedroom. 
After  that  it  was  dust-cloth,  and  soapsuds,  and  scrub- 
brush  in  a  race  against  recurrent  water  bags,  insistent 
doorbells,  and  the  inevitable  dinner  hour.  It  was 
mid-afternoon  when  Rose,  standing  a-tiptoe  on  a  chair, 
came  at  last  to  the  little  box  on  the  top  shelf  under  the 
bedding  in  the  hall  closet.  Her  hand  touched  the  box, 
and  closed  about  it.  A  little  electric  thrill  vibrated 
through  her  body.  She  stepped  down  from  the  chair, 
heavily,  listened  until  her  acute  ear  caught  the  sound 
of  the  sick  woman's  slumbrous  breathing;  then,  box 
in  hand,  walked  down  the  dark  hall  to  the  kitchen. 
The  rhubarb  pie,  still  steaming  in  its  pan,  was  cooling 
on  the  kitchen  table.  The  dishes  from  the  invalid's 


THE   ELDEST  127 

lunch-tray  littered  the  sink.  But  Rose,  seated  on  the 
kitchen  chair,  her  rumpled  dust-cap  pushed  back  from 
her  flushed,  perspiring  face,  untied  the  rude  bit  of 
string  that  bound  the  old  candy  box,  removed  the 
lid,  slowly,  and  by  that  act  was  wafted  magically  out 
of  the  world  of  rhubarb  pies,  and  kitchen  chairs,  and 
dirty  dishes,  into  that  place  whose  air  is  the  breath 
of  incense  and  myrrh,  whose  paths  are  rose-strewn, 
whose  dwellings  are  temples  dedicated  to  but  one  small 
god.  The  land  is  known  as  Love,  and  Rose  travelled 
back  to  it  on  the  magic  rug  of  memory. 

A  family  of  five  in  a  six-room  Chicago  flat  must 
sacrifice  sentiment  to  necessity.  There  is  precious 
little  space  for  those  pressed  flowers,  time-yellowed 
gowns,  and  ribbon-bound  packets  that  figured  so 
prominently  in  the  days  of  attics.  Into  the  garbage 
can  with  yesterday's  roses!  The  janitor's  burlap  sack 
yawns  for  this  morning's  mail;  last  year's  gown  has 
long  ago  met  its  end  at  the  hands  of  the  ol'-clo'es  man 
or  the  wash- woman's  daughter.  That  they  had  sur- 
vived these  fourteen  years,  and  the  strictures  of  their 
owner's  dwelling,  tells  more  about  this  boxful  of  letters 
than  could  be  conveyed  by  a  battalion  of  adjectives. 

Rose  began  at  the  top  of  the  pile,  in  her  orderly 
fashion,  and  read  straight  through  to  the  last.  It  took 
one  hour.  Half  of  that  time  she  was  not  reading.  She 
was  staring  straight  ahead  with  what  is  mistakenly 
called  an  unseeing  look,  but  which  actually  pierces  the 
veil  of  years  and  beholds  things  far,  far  beyond  the 


128  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

vision  of  the  actual  eye.  They  were  the  letters  of  a 
commonplace  man  to  a  commonplace  woman,  written 
when  they  loved  each  other,  and  so  they  were  touched 
with  something  of  the  divine.  They  must  have  been, 
else  how  could  they  have  sustained  this  woman  through 
fifteen  years  of  drudgery?  They  were  the  only  tangible 
foundation  left  of  the  structure  of  dreams  she  had  built 
about  this  man.  All  the  rest  of  her  house  of  love  had 
tumbled  about  her  ears  fifteen  years  before,  but  with 
these  few  remaining  bricks  she  had  erected  many  times 
since  castles  and  towers  more  exquisite  and  lofty  and 
soaring  than  the  original  humble  structure  had  evei 
been. 

The  story?  Well,  there  really  isn't  any,  as  we've 
warned  you.  Rose  had  been  pretty  then  in  much  the 
same  delicate  way  that  Floss  was  pretty  now.  They 
were  to  have  been  married.  Rose's  mother  fell  ill, 
Floss  and  Al  were  little  more  than  babies.  The  marriage 
was  put  off.  The  illness  lasted  six  months — a  year — 
two  years — became  interminable.  The  breach  into 
which  Rose  had  stepped  closed  about  her  and  became 
a  prison.  The  man  had  waited,  had  grown  impatient, 
finally  rebelled.  He  had  fled,  probably  to  marry  a  less 
encumbered  lady.  Rose  had  gone  dully  on,  caring  for 
the  household,  the  children,  the  sick  woman.  In  the 
years  that  had  gone  by  since  then  Rose  had  forgiven 
him  his  faithlessness.  She  only  remembered  that  he 
had  been  wont  to  call  her  his  Roschen,  his  Rosebud, 
his  pretty  flower  (being  a  German  gentleman).  She 


THE   ELDEST  129 

only  recalled  the  wonder  of  having  been  first  in  some 
one's  thoughts — she  who  now  was  so  hopelessly,  so 
irrevocably  last. 

As  she  sat  there  in  her  kitchen,  wearing  her  soap- 
stained  and  faded  blue  gingham,  and  the  dust-cap 
pushed  back  at  a  rakish  angle,  a  simpering  little 
smile  about  her  lips,  she  was  really  very  much  like  the 
disappointed  old  maids  you  used  to  see  so  cruelly 
pictured  in  the  comic  valentines.  Had  those  letters 
obsessed  her  a  little  more  strongly  she  might  have 
become  quite  mad,  the  Freudians  would  tell  you.  Had 
they  held  less  for  her,  or  had  she  not  been  so  completely 
the  household's  slave,  she-  might  have  found  a  certain 
solace  and  satisfaction  in  viewing  the  Greek  profile 
and  marcel  wave  of  the  most-worshipped  movie  star. 
As  it  was,  they  were  her  ballast,  her  refuge,  the  leav- 
ening yeast  in  the  soggy  dough  of  her  existence.  This 
man  had  wanted  her  to  be  his  wife.  She  had  found 
favour  in  his  eyes.  She  was  certain  that  he  still  thought 
of  her,  sometimes,  and  tenderly,  regretfully,  as  she 
thought  of  him.  It  helped  her  to  live.  Not  only  that, 
it  made  living  possible. 

A  clock  struck,  a  window  slammed,  or  a  street-noise 
smote  her  ear  sharply.  Some  sound  started  her  out  of 
her  reverie.  Rose  jumped,  stared  a  moment  at  the 
letters  in  her  lap,  then  hastily,  almost  shamefacedly, 
sorted  them  (she  knew  each  envelope  by  heart)  tied 
them,  placed  them  in  their  box  and  bore  them  down  the 
hall.  There,  mounting  her  chair,  she  scrubbed  the  top 


130  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

shelf  with  her  soapy  rag,  placed  the  box  in  its  corner, 
left  the  hall  closet  smelling  of  cleanliness,  with  never 
a  hint  of  lavender  to  betray  its  secret  treasure. 

Were  Rose  to  die  and  go  to  Heaven,  there  to  spend 
her  days  thumbing  a  golden  harp,  her  hands,  by  force 
of  habit,  would  drop  harp-strings  at  quarter  to  six, 
to  begin  laying  a  celestial  and  unspotted  table-cloth 
for  supper.  Habits  as  deeply  rooted  as  that  must  hold, 
even  in  after-life. 

To-night's  six-thirty  stampede  was  noticeably  sub- 
dued on  the  part  of  Pa  and  Al.  It  had  been  a  day  of 
sudden  and  enervating  heat,  and  the  city  had  done 
its  worst  to  them.  Pa's  pink  gills  showed  a  hint  of 
purple.  ATs  flimsy  silk  shirt  stuck  to  his  back,  and 
his  glittering  pompadour  was  many  degrees  less  sub- 
missive than  was  its  wont.  But  Floss  came  in  late, 
breathless,  and  radiant,  a  large  and  significant  paper 
bag  in  her  hand.  Rose,  in  the  kitchen,  was  transferring 
the  smoking  supper  from  pot  to  platter.  Pa,  in  the 
doorway  of  the  sick  woman's  little  room,  had  just 
put  his  fourteen-year-old  question  with  his  usual 
assumption  of  heartiness  and  cheer:  "Well,  well! 
And  how's  the  old  girl  to-night?  Feel  like  you  could 
get  up  and  punish  a  little  supper,  eh?"  Al  engaged 
at  the  telephone  with  some  one  whom  he  addressed 
proprietorially  as  Kid,  was  deep  in  his  plans  for  the 
evening's  diversion.  Upon  this  accustomed  scene 
Floss  burst  with  havoc. 

"Rose!    Rose,  did  you  iron  my  Georgette  crepe? 


THE   ELDEST  131 

Listen!  Guess  what!"  All  this  as  she  was  rushing  down 
the  hall,  paper  hat-bag  still  in  hand.  "  Guess  who  was 
in  the  store  to-day!" 

Rose,  at  the  oven,  turned  a  flushed  and  interested 
face  toward  Floss. 

"Who?    What's  that?    A  hat?" 

"Yes.    But  listen " 

"Let's  see  it." 

Floss  whipped  it  out  of  its  bag,  defiantly.  "There! 
But  wait  a  minute!  Let  me  tell  you " 

"How  much?" 

Floss  hesitated  just  a  second.  Her  wage  was  nine 
dollars  a  week.  Then,  "Seven-fifty,  trimmed."  The 
hat  was  one  of  those  tiny,  head-hugging  absurdities 
that  only  the  Flosses  can  wear. 

"Trimmed  is  right!"  jeered  Al,  from  the  doorway. 

Rose,  thin-lipped  with  disapproval,  turned  to  her 
stove  again. 

"Well,  but  I  had  to  have  it.  I'm  going  to  the 
theatre  to-night.  And  guess  who  with!  Henry 
Selz!" 

Henry  Selz  was  the  unromantic  name  of  the  com- 
monplace man  over  whose  fifteen-year-old  letters  Rose 
had  glowed  and  dreamed  an  hour  before.  It  was  a 
name  that  had  become  mythical  in  that  household — 
to  all  but  one.  Rose  heard  it  spoken  now  with  a  sense 
of  unreality.  She  smiled  a  little  uncertainly,  and  went 
on  stirring  the  flour  thickening  for  the  gravy.  But  she 
was  dimly  aware  that  something  inside  her  had  sus- 


i32  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

pended  action  for  a  moment,  during  which  moment 
she  felt  strangely  light  and  disembodied,  and  that 
directly  afterward  the  thing  began  to  work  madly,  so 
that  there  was  a  choked  feeling  in  her  chest  and  a  hot 
pounding  in  her  head. 

"What's  the  joke?"  she  said,  stirring  the  gravy  in 
the  pan. 

"Joke  nothing!  Honest  to  God!  I  was  standing 
back  of  the  counter  at  about  ten.  The  rush  hadn't 
really  begun  yet.  Glove  trade  usually  starts  late.  I 
was  standing  there  kidding  Herb,  the  stock  boy,  when 
down  the  aisle  comes  a  man  in  a  big  hat,  like  you  see  in 
the  western  pictures,  hair  a  little  grey  at  the  temples, 
and  everything,  just  like  a  movie  actor.  I  said  to  Herb, 
'Is  it  real?'  I  hadn't  got  the  words  out  of  my  mouth 
when  the  fellow  sees  me,  stands  stock  still  in  the  middle 
of  the  aisle  with  his  mouth  open  and  his  eyes  sticking 
out.  ' Register  surprise/  I  said  to  Herb,  and  looked 
around  for  the  camera.  And  that  minute  he  took  two 
jumps  over  to  where  I  was  standing,  grabbed  my  hands 
and  says,  'Rose!  Rose!'  kind  of  choky.  'Not  by  about 
twenty  years,'  I  said.  'I'm  Floss,  Rose's  sister.  Let 
go  my  hands!'  3 

Rose — a  transfigured  Rose,  glowing,  trembling, 
radiant — repeated,  vibrantly,  "You  said,  'I'm  Floss, 
Rose's  sister.  Let  go  my  hands!'  And ?" 

"He  looked  kind  of  stunned,  for  just  a  minute.  His 
face  was  a  scream,  honestly.  Then  he  said,  'But  of 
course.  Fifteen  years.  But  I  had  always  thought  of 


THE   ELDEST  133 

her  as  just  the  same. '  And  he  kind  of  laughed,  ashamed, 
like  a  kid.  And  the  whitest  teeth!" 

"Yes,  they  were— white,"  said  Rose.     "Well?" 

"Well,  I  said,  Won't  I  do  instead?'  'You  bet  you'll 
do!'  he  said.  And  then  he  told  me  his  name,  and  how 
he  was  living  out  in  Spokane,  and  his  wife  was  dead, 
and  he  had  made  a  lot  of  money — fruit,  or  real  estate, 
or  something.  He  talked  a  lot  about  it  at  lunch,  but 
I  didn't  pay  any  attention,  as  long  as  he  really  has  it 
a  lot  I  care  how " 

"At  lunch?" 

"Everything  from  grape-fruit  to  coffee.  I  didn't 
know  it  could  be  done  in  one  hour.  Believe  me,  he  had 
those  waiters  jumping.  It  takes  money.  He  asked  all 
about  you,  and  ma,  and  everything.  And  he  kept  look- 
ing at  me  and  saying,  'It's  wonderful!'  I  said,  'Isn't  it!' 
but  I  meant  the  lunch.  He  wanted  me  to  go  driving 
this  afternoon — auto  and  everything.  Kept  calling 
me  Rose.  It  made  me  kind  of  mad,  and  I  told  him  how 
you  look.  He  said,  'I  suppose  so, '  and  asked  me  to  go 
to  a  show  to-night.  Listen,  did  you  press  my  Georgette? 
And  the  blue?" 

"I'll  iron  the  waist  while  you're  eating.  I'm  not 
hungry.  It  only  takes  a  minute.  Did  you  say  he  was 
grey?" 

"Grey?  Oh,  you  mean — why,  just  here,  and  here. 
Interesting,  but  not  a  bit  old.  And  he's  got  that 
money  look  that  makes  waiters  and  doormen  and  taxi 
drivers  just  hump.  I  don't  want  any  supper.  Just  a 


134  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

eup  of  tea.  I  haven't  got  enough  time  to  dress  in, 
decently,  as  it  is. " 

Al,  draped  in  the  doorway,  removed  his  cigarette 
to  give  greater  force  to  his  speech.  "Your  story  in- 
terests me  strangely,  little  gell.  But  there's  a  couple  of 
other  people  that  would  like  to  eat,  even  if  you  wouldn't. 
Come  on  with  that  supper,  Ro.  Nobody  staked  me  to 
a  lunch  to-day." 

Rose  turned  to  her  stove  again.  Two  carmine  spots 
had  leaped  suddenly  to  her  cheeks.  She  served  the 
meal  in  silence,  and  ate  nothing,  but  that  was  not 
remarkable.  For  the  cook  there  is  little  appeal  in  the 
meat  that  she  has  tended  from  its  moist  and  bloody 
entrance  in  the  butcher's  paper,  through  the  basting 
or  broiling  stage  to  its  formal  appearance  on  the 
platter.  She  saw  that  Al  and  her  father  were  served. 
Then  she  went  back  to  the  kitchen,  and  the  thud  of  her 
iron  was  heard  as  she  deftly  fluted  the  ruffles  of  the 
crepe  blouse.  Floss  appeared  when  the  meal  was  half 
eaten,  her  hair  shiningly  coiffed,  the  pink  ribbons  of 
her  corset  cover  showing  under  her  thin  kimono.  She 
poured  herself  a  cup  of  tea  and  drank  it  in  little  quick, 
nervous  gulps.  She  looked  deliciously  young,  and 
fragile  and  appealing,  her  delicate  slenderness  revealed 
by  the  flimsy  garment  she  wore.  Excitement  and 
anticipation  lent  a  glow  to  her  eyes,  colour  to  her  cheeks. 
Al,  glancing  expertly  at  the  ingenuousness  of  her  art- 
fully simple  coiffure,  the  slim  limpness  of  her  body, 
her  wide-eyed  gaze,  laughed  a  wise  little  laugh. 


THE   ELDEST  135 

"Every  move  a  Pickford.    And  so  girlish  withal.7' 

Floss  ignored  him.  "  Hurry  up  with  that  waist, 
Rose!" 

"I'm  on  the  collar  now.  In  a  second."  There  was 
a  little  silence.  Then:  "Floss,  is — is  Henry  going  to 
call  for  you — here?" 

"Well,  sure!  Did  you  think  I  was  going  to  meet 
him  on  the  corner?  He  said  he  wanted  to  see  you,  or 
something  polite  like  that." 

She  finished  her  tea  and  vanished  again.  Al,  too,  had 
disappeared  to  begin  that  process  from  which  he  had  al- 
ways emerged  incredibly  sleek,  and  dapper  and  per- 
fumed. His  progress  with  shaving  brush,  shirt,  collar 
and  tie  was  marked  by  disjointed  bars  of  the  newest 
syncopation  whistled  with  an  uncanny  precision  and 
fidelity  to  detail.  He  caught  the  broken  time,  and 
tossed  it  lightly  up  again,  and  dropped  it,  and  caught  it 
deftly  like  a  juggler  playing  with  frail  crystal  globes 
that  seem  forever  on  the  point  of  crashing  to  the  ground. 

Pa  stood  up,  yawning.  "Well,"  he  said,  his  manner 
very  casual,  "guess  111  just  drop  around  to  the  movie." 

From  the  kitchen,  "Don't  you  want  to  sit  with 
ma  a  minute,  first?" 

"I  will  when  I  come  back.  They're  showing  the 
third  installment  of  'The  Adventures  of  Aline,'  and 
I  don't  want  to  come  in  in  the  middle  of  it." 

He  knew  the  selfishness  of  it,  this  furtive  and 
sprightly  old  man.  And  because  he  knew  it  he  at- 
tempted to  hide  his  guilt  under  a  burst  of  temper. 


i36  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

"I've  been  slaving  all  day.  I  guess  I've  got  the  right 
to  a  little  amusement.  A  man  works  his  fingers  to  the 
bone  for  his  family,  and  then  his  own  daughter  nags 
him." 

He  stamped  down  the  hall,  righteously,  and  slammed 
the  front  door. 

Rose  came  from  the  kitchen,  the  pink  blouse,  warm 
from  the  iron,  in  one  hand.  She  prinked  out  its  ruffles 
and  pleatings  as  she  went.  Floss,  burnishing  her 
nails  somewhat  frantically  with  a  dilapidated  and 
greasy  buffer,  snatched  the  garment  from  her  and 
slipped  bare  arms  into  it.  The  front  door  bell  rang, 
three  big,  determined  rings.  Panic  fell  upon  the  house- 
hold. 

"It's  him!"  whispered  Floss,  as  if  she  could  be 
heard  in  the  entrance  three  floors  below.  a  You'll 
have  to  go." 

"I  can't!"  Every  inch  of  her  seemed  to  shrink 
and  cower  away  from  the  thought.  "I  can't!"  Her 
eyes  darted  to  and  fro  like  a  hunted  thing  seeking  to 
escape.  She  ran  to  the  hall.  "Al!  Al,  go  to  the  door, 
will  you?" 

"  Can't,"  came  back  in  a  thick  mumble.    "  Shaving." 

The  front  door-bell  rang  again,  three  big,  deter- 
mined rings.  "  Rose !"  hissed  Floss,  her  tone  venomous. 
"I  can't  go  with  my  waist  open.  For  heaven's  sake! 
Go  to  the  door!" 

"I  can't,"  repeated  Rose,  in  a  kind  of  wail.  "I — 
can't."  And  went.  As  she  went  she  passed  one 


THE   ELDEST  137 

futile,  work-worn  hand  over  her  hair,  plucked  off  her 
apron  and  tossed  it  into  a  corner,  first  wiping  her 
flushed  face  with  it. 

Henry  Selz  came  up  the  shabby  stairs  springily  as 
a  man  of  forty  should.  Rose  stood  at  the  door  and 
waited  for  him.  He  stood  hi  the  doorway  a  moment, 
uncertainly. 

" How-do,  Henry." 

His  uncertainty  became  incredulity.  Then,  "Why, 
how-do,  Rose!  Didn't  know  you — for  a  minute. 
Well,  well!  It's  been  a  long  time.  Let's  see — ten — 
fourteen — about  fifteen  years,  isn't  it?" 

His  tone  was  cheerfully  conversational.  He  really 
was  interested,  mathematically.  He  was  as  senti- 
mental in  his  reminiscence  as  if  he  had  been  calculating 
the  lapse  of  tune  between  the  Chicago  fire  and  the 
World's  Fair. 

"Fifteen,"  said  Rose,  "in  May.  Won't  you  come 
in?  Floss'll  be  here  in  a  minute." 

Henry  Selz  came  in  and  sat  down  on  the  davenport 
couch  and  dabbed  at  his  forehead.  The  years  had 
been  very  kind  to  him — those  same  years  that  had 
treated  Rose  so  ruthlessly.  He  had  the  look  of  an 
outdoor  man;  a  man  who  has  met  prosperity  and 
walked  with  her,  and  followed  her  pleasant  ways;  a 
man  who  has  learned  late  in  life  of  golf  and  caviar  and 
tailors,  but  who  has  adapted  himself  to  these  acces- 
sories of  wealth  with  a  minimum  of  friction. 

"It  certainly  is  warm,  for  this  time  of  year."    He 


138  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

leaned  back  and  regarded  Rose  tolerantly.  "Well, 
and  how've  you  been?  Did  little  sister  tell  you  how 
flabbergasted  I  was  when  I  saw  her  this  morning? 
I'm  darned  if  it  didn't  take  fifteen  years  off  my  age, 
just  like  that!  I  got  kind  of  balled  up  for  one  minute 
and  thought  it  was  you.  She  tell  you?" 

"Yes,  she  told  me/'  said  Rose. 

"I  hear  your  ma's  still  sick.  That  certainly  is  tough. 
And  you've  never  married,  eh?" 

"  Never  married,"  echoed  Rose. 

And  so  they  made  conversation,  a  little  uncom- 
fortably, until  there  came  quick,  light  young  steps 
down  the  hallway,  and  Floss  appeared  in  the  door,  a 
radiant,  glowing,  girlish  vision.  Youth  was  in  her 
eyes,  her  cheeks,  on  her  lips.  She  radiated  it.  She 
was  miraculously  well  dressed,  in  her  knowingly  simple 
blue  serge  suit,  and  her  tiny  hat,  and  her  neat  shoes 
and  gloves. 

"  Ah !  And  how's  the  little  girl  to-night?"  said  Henry 
Selz. 

Floss  dimpled,  blushed,  smiled,  swayed.  "Did  I 
keep  you  waiting  a  terribly  long  time?" 

"No,  not  a  bit.  Rose  and  I  were  chinning  over  old 
times,  weren't  we,  Rose?"  A  kindly,  clumsy  thought 
struck  him.  "Say,  look  here,  Rose.  We're  going  to 
a  show.  Why  don't  you  run  and  put  on  your  hat  and 
come  along.  H'm?  Come  on!" 

Rose  smiled  as  a  mother  smiles  at  a  child  that  has 
unknowingly  hurt  her.  "No,  thanks,  Henry.  Not 


THE   ELDEST  139 

to-night.  You  and  Floss  run  along.  Yes,  I'll  remem- 
ber you  to  Ma.  I'm  sorry  you  can't  see  her.  But 
she  don't  see  anybody,  poor  Ma." 

Then  they  were  off,  in  a  little  flurry  of  words  and 
laughter.  From  force  of  habit  Rose's  near-sighted 
eyes  peered  critically  at  the  hang  of  Floss's  blue  skirt 
and  the  angle  of  the  pert  new  hat.  She  stood  a  moment, 
uncertainly,  after  they  had  left.  On  her  face  was  the 
queerest  look,  as  of  one  thinking,  re-adjusting,  strug- 
gling to  arrive  at  a  conclusion  in  the  midst  of  sudden 
bewilderment.  She  turned  mechanically  and  went 
into  her  mother's  room.  She  picked  up  the  tray  on 
the  table  by  the  bed. 

"Who  was  that?"  asked  the  sick  woman,  in  her 
ghostly,  devitalised  voice. 

"That  was  Henry  Selz,"  said  Rose. 

The  sick  woman  grappled  a  moment  with  memory. 
"  Henry  Selz!  Henry — oh,  yes.  Did  he  go  out  with 
Rose?" 

"Yes,"  said  Rose. 

"It's  cold  in  here,"  whined  the  sick  woman. 

"I'll  get  you  a  hot  bag  in  a  minute,  Ma."  Rose 
carried  the  tray  down  the  hall  to  the  kitchen.  At  that 
Al  emerged  from  his  bedroom,  shrugging  himself  into 
his  coat.  He  followed  Rose  down  the  hall  and  watched 
her  as  she  filled  the  bag  and  screwed  it  and  wiped  it 
dry. 

"I'll  take  that  in  to  Ma,"  he  volunteered.  He  was 
up  the  hall  and  back  in  a  flash.  Rose  had  slumped 


140  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

into  a  chair  at  the  dining-room  table,  and  was  pouring 
herself  a  cup  of  cold  and  bitter  tea.  Al  came  over  to 
her  and  laid  one  white  hand  on  her  shoulder. 

"Ro,  lend  me  a  couple  of  dollars  till  Saturday,  will 
you?" 

"I  should  say  not." 

Al  doused  his  cigarette  in  the  dregs  of  a  convenient 
teacup.  He  bent  down  and  laid  his  powdered  and  pale 
cheek  against  Rose's  sallow  one.  One  arm  was  about 
her,  and  his  hand  patted  her  shoulder. 

"Oh,  come  on,  kid,"  he  coaxed.  "Don't  I  always 
pay  you  back?  Come  on!  Be  a  sweet  oF  sis.  I 
wouldn't  ask  you  only  I've  got  a  date  to  go  to  the  White 
City  to-night,  and  dance,  and  I  couldn't  get  out  of  it. 
I  tried."  He  kissed  her,  and  his  lips  were  moist,  and 
he  reeked  of  tobacco,  and  though  Rose  shrugged 
impatiently  away  from  him  he  knew  that  he  had  won. 
Rose  was  not  an  eloquent  woman;  she  was  not  even 
an  articulate  one,  at  times.  If  she  had  been,  she  would 
have  lifted  up  her  voice  to  say  now: 

"Oh,  God!  I  am  a  woman!  Why  have  you  given 
me  all  the  sorrows,  and  the  drudgery,  and  the  bitterness 
and  the  thanklessness  of  motherhood,  with  none  of  its 
joys!  Give  me  back  my  youth!  I'll  drink  the  dregs 
at  the  bottom  of  the  cup,  but  first  let  me  taste  the 
sweet!" 

But  Rose  did  not  talk  or  think  in  such  terms.  She 
could  not  have  put  into  words  the  thing  she  was 
feeling  even  if  she  had  been  able  to  diagnose  it.  So 


THE   ELDEST  141 

what  she  said  was,  "Don't  you  think  I  ever  get  sick 
and  tired  of  slaving  for  a  thankless  bunch  like  you? 
WeU,  I  do!  Sick  and  tired  of  it.  That's  what!  You 
make  me  tired,  coming  around  asking  for  money,  as 
if  I  was  a  bank." 

But  Al  waited.  And  presently  she  said,  grudgingly, 
wearily,  "There's  a  dollar  bill  and  some  small  change  in 
the  can  on  the  second  shelf  in  the  china  closet." 

Al  was  off  like  a  terrier.  From  the  pantry  came  the 
clink  of  metal  against  metal.  He  was  up  the  hall  in 
a  flash,  without  a  look  at  Rose.  The  front  door 
slammed  a  third  time. 

Rose  stirred  her  cold  tea  slowly,  leaning  on  the  table's 
edge  and  gazing  down  into  the  amber  liquid  that  she 
did  not  mean  to  drink.  For  suddenly  and  comically 
her  face  puckered  up  like  a  child's.  Her  head  came 
down  among  the  supper  things  with  a  little  crash  that 
set  the.  teacups,  and  the  greasy  plates  to  jingling, 
and  she  sobbed  as  she  lay  there,  with  great  tearing, 
ugly  sobs  that  would  not  be  stilled,  though  she  tried 
to  stifle  them  as  does  one  who  lives  in  a  paper-thin 
Chicago  flat.  She  was  not  weeping  for  the  Henry 
Selz  whom  she  had  just  seen.  She  was  not  weeping 
for  envy  of  her  selfish  little  sister,  or  for  loneliness,  or 
weariness.  She  was  weeping  at  the  loss  of  a  ghost  who 
had  become  her  familiar.  She  was  weeping  because 
a  packet  of  soiled  and  yellow  old  letters  on  the  top 
shelf  in  the  hall  closet  was  now  only  a  packet  of  soiled 
and  yellow  old  letters,  food  for  the  ash  can.  She  was 


142  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

weeping  because  the  urge  of  spring,  that  had  expressed 
itself  in  her  only  this  morning  pitifully  enough  in  terms 
of  rhubarb,  and  housecleaning  and  a  bundle  of  thumbed 
old  love  letters,  had  stirred  in  her  for  the  last  time. 

But  presently  she  did  stop  her  sobbing  and  got  up 
and  cleared  the  table,  and  washed  the  dishes  and 
even  glanced  at  the  crumpled  sheets  of  the  morning 
paper  that  she  never  found  time  to  read  until  evening. 
By  eight  o'clock  the  little  flat  was  very  still. 


THAT'S  MARRIAGE 


THERESA  PLATT  (she  that  had  been  Terry 
Sheehan)  watched  her  husband  across  the  break- 
fast table  with  eyes  that  smouldered.  When  a  woman's 
eyes  smoulder  at  7.30  a.  m.  the  person  seated  opposite 
her  had  better  look  out.  But  Orville  Platt  was  quite 
unaware  of  any  smouldering  in  progress.  He  was 
occupied  with  his  eggs.  How  could  he  know  that 
these  very  eggs  were  feeding  the  dull  red  menace  in 
Terry  Platt's  eyes? 

When  Orville  Platt  ate  a  soft-boiled  egg  he  concen- 
trated on  it.  He  treated  it  as  a  great  adventure. 
Which,  after  all,  it  is.  Few  adjuncts  of  our  daily  life 
contain  the  element  of  chance  that  is  to  be  found  in  a 
three-minute  breakfast  egg. 

This  was  Orville  Platt's  method  of  attack:  First, 
he  chipped  off  the  top,  neatly.  Then  he  bent  forward 
and  subjected  it  to  a  passionate  and  relentless  scrutiny. 
Straightening — preparatory  to  plunging  his  spoon 
therein — he  flapped  his  right  elbow.  It  wasn't  exactly 
a  flap;  it  was  a  pass  between  a  hitch  and  a  flap,  and 
presented  external  evidence  of  a  mental  state.  Orville 
Platt  always  gave  that  little  preliminary  jerk  when  he 

143 


144  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

was  contemplating  a  step,  or  when  he  was  moved, 
or  argumentative.  It  was  a  trick  as  innocent  as  it  was 
maddening. 

Terry  Platt  had  learned  to  look  for  that  flap — they 
had  been  married  four  years — to  look  for  it,  and  to 
hate  it  with  a  morbid,  unreasoning  hate.  That  flap 
of  the  elbow  was  tearing  Terry  Platt's  nerves  into 
raw,  bleeding  fragments. 

Her  fingers  were  clenched  tightly  under  the  table, 
now.  She  was  breathing  unevenly.  "If  he  does  that 
again,"  she  told  herself,  "if  he  flaps  again  when  he 
opens  the  second  egg,  I'll  scream.  I'll  scream.  I'll 
scream!  I'll  sc— • 

He  had  scooped  the  first  egg  into  his  cup.  Now  he 
picked  up  the  second,  chipped  it,  concentrated,  straight- 
ened, then — up  went  the  elbow,  and  down,  with  the 
accustomed  little  flap. 

The  tortured  nerves  snapped.  Through  the  early 
morning  quiet  of  Wetona,  Wisconsin,  hurtled  the 
shrill,  piercing  shriek  of  Terry  Platt's  hysteria. 

"Terry!    For  God's  sake!    What's  the  matter!" 

Orville  Platt  dropped  the  second  egg,  and  his  spoon. 
The  egg  yolk  trickled  down  his  plate.  The  spoon  made 
a  clatter  and  flung  a  gay  spot  of  yellow  on  the  cloth.  He 
started  toward  her. 

Terry,  wild-eyed,  pointed  a  shaking  finger  at  him. 
She  was  laughing,  now,  uncontrollably.  "Your  elbow! 
Your  elbow!" 

"Elbow?"    He  looked  down  at  it,  bewildered;  then 


THAT'S  MARRIAGE  145 

up,  fright  in  his  face.  "What's  the  matter  with 
it?" 

She  mopped  her  eyes.  Sobs  shook  her.  "You 
f-f-flapped  it." 

"F-f-f "  The  bewilderment  in  OrviUe  Platt's 

face  gave  way  to  anger.  "Do  you  mean  to  tell  me 
that  you  screeched  like  that  because  my — because  I 
moved  my  elbow?" 

"Yes." 

His  anger  deepened  and  reddened  to  fury.  He 
choked.  He  had  started  from  his  chair  with  his  napkin 
in  his  hand.  He  still  clutched  it.  Now  he  crumpled 
it  into  a  wad  and  hurled  it  to  the  centre  of  the  table, 
where  it  struck  a  sugar  bowl,  dropped  back,  and  un- 

crumpled  slowly,  reprovingly.  "You — you "  Then 

bewilderment  closed  down  again  like  a  fog  over  his 
countenance.  "But  why?  I  can't  see ': 

"Because  it — because  I  can't  stand  it  any  longer. 
Flapping.  This  is  what  you  do.  Like  this." 

And  she  did  it.  Did  it  with  insulting  fidelity,  being 
a  clever  mimic. 

"Well,  all  I  can  say  is  you're  crazy,  yelling  like 
that,  for  nothing." 

"It  isn't  nothing." 

"Isn't,  huh?  If  that  isn't  nothing,  what  is?"  They 
were  growing  incoherent.  "What  d'you  mean,  screech- 
ing like  a  maniac?  Like  a  wild  woman?  The  neigh- 
bours'll  think  I've  killed  you.  What  d'you  mean, 
anyway!" 


i46  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

"I  mean  I'm  tired  of  watching  it,  that's  what.  Sick 
and  tired." 

"Y'are,  huh?  Well,  young  lady,  just  let  me  tell 
you  something 

He  told  her.  There  followed  one  of  those  incredible 
quarrels,  as  sickening  as  they  are  human,  which  can 
take  place  only  between  two  people  who  love  each  other; 
who  love  each  other  so  well  that  each  knows  with  cruel 
certainty  the  surest  way  to  wound  the  other;  and  who 
stab,  and  tear,  and  claw  at  these  vulnerable  spots  in 
exact  proportion  to  their  love. 

Ugly  words.  Bitter  words.  Words  that  neither 
knew  they  knew  flew  between  them  like  sparks  between 
steel  striking  steel. 

From  him — "Trouble  with  you  is  you  haven't  got 
enough  to  do.  That's  the  trouble  with  half  you  women. 
Just  lay  around  the  house,  rotting.  I'm  a  fool,  slaving 
on  the  road  to  keep  a  good-for-nothing " 

"I  suppose  you  call  sitting  around  hotel  lobbies 
slaving!  I  suppose  the  house  runs  itself!  How  about 
my  evenings?  Sitting  here  alone,  night  after  night, 
when  you're  on  the  road." 

Finally,  "Well,  if  you  don't  like  it,"  he  snarled,  and 
lifted  his  chair  by  the  back  and  slammed  it  down, 
savagely,  "if  you  don't  like  it,  why  don't  you  get 
out,  h'm?  Why  don't  you  get  out?" 

And  from  her,  her  eyes  narrowed  to  two  slits,  her 
cheeks  scarlet: 

"Why,  thanks.    I  guess  I  will." 


THAT'S  MARRIAGE  147 

Ten  minutes  later  he  had  flung  out  of  the  house  to 
catch  the  8.19  for  Manitowoc.  He  marched  down  the 
street,  his  shoulders  swinging  rhythmically  to  the  weight 
of  the  burden  he  carried — his  black  leather  hand-bag 
and  the  shiny  tan  sample  case,  battle-scarred,  both, 
from  many  encounters  with  ruthless  porters  and  'bus 
men  and  bell  boys.  For  four  years,  as  he  left  for  his 
semi-monthly  trip,  he  and  Terry  had  observed  a  certain 
little  ceremony  (as  had^the  neighbours).  She  would 
stand  in  the  doorway  watching  him  down  the  street, 
the  heavier  sample-case  banging  occasionally  at  his 
shin.  The  depot  was  only  three  blocks  away.  Terry 
watched  him  with  fond,  but  unillusioned  eyes,  which 
proves  that  she  really  loved  him.  He  was  a  dapper, 
well-dressed  fat  man,  with  a  weakness  for  pronounced 
patterns  in  suitings,  and  addicted  to  brown  derbies. 
One  week  on  the  road,  one  week  at  home.  That  was 
his  routine.  The  wholesale  grocery  trade  liked  Platt, 
and  he  had  for  his  customers  the  fondness  that  a 
travelling  salesman  has  who  is  successful  in  his  territory. 
Before  his  marriage  to  Terry  Sheehan  his  little  red 
address  book  had  been  overwhelming  proof  against 
the  theory  that  nobody  loves  a  fat  man. 

Terry,  standing  in  the  doorway,  always  knew  that 
when  he  reached  the  corner,  just  where  Schroeder's 
house  threatened  to  hide  him  from  view,  he  would 
stop,  drop  the  sample  case,  wave  his  hand  just  once, 
pick  up  the  sample  case  and  go  on,  proceeding  back- 
ward for  a  step  or  two,  until  Schroeder's  house  made 


I48  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

good  its  threat.  It  was  a  comic  scene  in  the  eyes  of  the 
onlooker,  perhaps  because  a  chubby  Romeo  offends 
the  sense  of  fitness.  The  neighbours,  lurking  behind 
their  parlour  curtains,  had  laughed  at  first.  But  after 
awhile  they  learned  to  look  for  that  little  scene,  and  to 
take  it  unto  themselves,  as  if  it  were  a  personal  thing. 
Fifteen-year  wives  whose  husbands  had  long  since 
abandoned  flowery  farewells  used  to  get  a  vicarious 
thrill  out  of  it,  and  to  eye  Terry  with  a  sort  of  envy. 

This  morning  Orville  Platt  did  not  even  falter  when 
he  reached  Schroeder's  corner.  He  marched  straight 
on,  looking  steadily  ahead,  the  heavy  bags  swinging 
from  either  hand.  Even  if  he  had  stopped — though 
she  knew  he  wouldn't — Terry  Platt  would  not  have 
seen  him.  She  remained  seated  at  the  disordered 
breakfast  table,  a  dreadfully  still  figure,  and  sinister; 
a  figure  of  stone  and  fire;  of  ice  and  flame.  Over  and 
over  in  her  mind  she  was  milling  the  things  she  might 
have  said  to  him,  and  had  not.  She  brewed  a  hundred 
vitriolic  cruelties  that  she  might  have  flung  in  his  face. 
She  would  concoct  one  biting  brutality,  and  dismiss 
it  for  a  second,  and  abandon  that  for  a  third.  She  was 
too  angry  to  cry — a  dangerous  state  in  a  woman.  She 
was  what  is  known  as  cold  mad,  so  that  her  mind  was 
working  clearly  and  with  amazing  swiftness,  and  yet 
as  though  it  were  a  thing  detached;  a  thing  that  was 
no  part  of  her. 

She  sat  thus  for  the  better  part  of  an  hour,  motion- 
less except  for  one  forefinger  that  was,  quite  uncon- 


THAT'S  MARRIAGE  149 

sciously,  tapping  out  a  popular  and  cheap  little  air 
that  she  had  been  strumming  at  the  piano  the  evening 
before,  having  bought  it  down  town  that  same  after- 
noon. It  had  struck  Orville's  fancy,  and  she  had  played 
it  over  and  over  for  him.  Her  right  forefinger  was 
playing  the  entire  tune,  and  something  in  the  back 
of  her  head  was  following  it  accurately,  though  the 
separate  thinking  process  was  going  on  just  the  same. 
Her  eyes  were  bright,  and  wide,  and  hot.  Suddenly 
she  became  conscious  of  the  musical  antics  of  her 
finger.  She  folded  it  in  with  its  mates,  so  that  her  hand 
became  a  fist.  She  stood  up  and  stared  down  at  the 
clutter  of  the  breakfast  table.  The  egg — that  fateful 
second  egg — had  congealed  to  a  mottled  mess  of  yellow 
and  white.  The  spoon  lay  on  the  cloth.  His  coffee, 
only  half  consumed,  showed  tan  with  a  cold  grey 
film  over  it.  A  slice  of  toast  at  the  left  of  his  plate 
seemed  to  grin  at  her  with  the  semi-circular  wedge 
that  he  had  bitten  out  of  it. 

Terry  stared  down  at  this  congealing  remnant.  Then 
she  laughed,  a  hard,  high  little  laugh,  pushed  a  plate 
away  contemptuously  with  her  hand,  and  walked  into 
the  sitting  room.  On  the  piano  was  the  piece  of  music 
(Bennie  Gottschalk's  great  song  hit,  "Hicky  Bloo") 
which  she  had  been  playing  the  night  before.  She 
picked  it  up,  tore  it  straight  across,  once,  placed  the 
pieces  back  to  back  and  tore  it  across  again.  Then 
she  dropped  the  pieces  to  the  floor. 

"You  bet  I'm  going,"  she  said,  as  though  concluding 


1 50  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

a  train  of  thought.  "You  just  bet  I'm  going.  Right 
now!" 

And  Terry  went.  She  went  for  much  the  same  reason 
as  that  given  by  the  ladye  of  high  degree  in  the  old 
English  song — she  who  had  left  her  lord  and  bed  and 
board  to  go  with  the  raggle-taggle  gipsies-O!  Tht 
thing  that  was  sending  Terry  Platt  away  was  much 
more  than  a  conjugal  quarrel  precipitated  by  a  soft- 
boiled  egg  and  a  flap  of  the  arm.  It  went  so  much 
deeper  that  if  psychology  had  not  become  a  cant  word 
we  might  drag  it  into  the  explanation.  It  went  so  deep 
that  it's  necessary  to  delve  back  to  the  days  when 
Theresa  Platt  was  Terry  Sheehan  to  get  the  real  signi- 
ficance of  it,  and  of  the  things  she  did  after  she  went. 

When  Mrs.  Orville  Platt  had  been  Terry  Sheehan 
she  had  played  the  piano,  afternoons  and  evenings, 
in  the  orchestra  of  the  Bijou  theatre,  on  Cass  street, 
Wetona,  Wisconsin.  Any  one  with  a  name  like  Terry 
Sheehan  would,  perforce,  do  well  anything  she  might 
set  out  to  do.  There  was  nothing  of  genius  in  Terry, 
but  there  was  something  of  fire,  and  much  that  was 
Irish.  The  combination  makes  for  what  is  known  as 
imagination  in  playing.  Which  meant  that  the  Watson 
Team,  Eccentric  Song  and  Dance  Artists,  never  needed 
a  rehearsal  when  they  played  the  Bijou.  Ruby  Watson 
used  merely  to  approach  Terry  before  the  Monday 
performance,  sheet-music  hi  hand,  and  say,  "Listen, 
dearie.  We've  got  some  new  business  I  want  to  wise 
you  to.  Right  here  it  goes  'Turn  dee-dee  dum  dee-dee 


THAT'S  MARRIAGE  151 

turn  dum  dum.  See?  Like  that.  And  then  Jim  vamps. 
Get  me?" 

Terry,  at  the  piano,  would  pucker  her  pretty  brow 
a  moment.  Then,  "Like  this,  you  mean?" 

"That's  it!    You've  got  it.", 

"All  right.    I'll  tell  the  drum." 

She  could  play  any  tune  by  ear,  once  heard.  She 
got  the  spirit  of  a  thing,  and  transmitted  it.  When 
Terry  played  a  march  number  you  tapped  the  floor 
with  your  foot,  and  unconsciously  straightened  your 
shoulders.  When  she  played  a  home-and-mother  song 
that  was  heavy  on  the  minor  wail  you  hoped  that  the 
man  next  to  you  didn't  know  you  were  crying  (which 
he  probably  didn't,  because  he  was  weeping,  too). 

At  that  time  motion  pictures  had  not  attained  their 
present  virulence.  Vaudeville,  polite  or  otherwise, 
had  not  yet  been  crowded  out  by  the  ubiquitous 
film.  The  Bijou  offered  entertainment  of  the  cigar- 
box  tramp  variety,  interspersed  with  trick  bicyclists, 
soubrettes  in  slightly  soiled  pink,  trained  seals,  and 
Family  Fours  with  lumpy  legs  who  tossed  each  other 
about  and  struck  Goldbergian  attitudes. 

Contact  with  these  gave  Terry  Sheehan  a  semi- 
professional  tone.  The  more  conservative  of  her  towns- 
people looked  at  her  askance.  There  never  had  been 
an  evil  thing  about  Terry,  but  Wetona  considered  her 
rather  fly.  Terry's  hair  was  very  black,  and  she  had 
a  fondness  for  those  little,  close-fitting  scarlet  velvet 
turbans.  A  scarlet  velvet  turban  would  have  made 


152  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

Martha  Washington  look  fly.  Terry's  mother  had 
died  when  the  girl  was  eight,  and  Terry's  father  had 
been  what  is  known  as  easy-going.  A  good-natured, 
lovable,  shiftless  chap  in  the  contracting  business.  He 
drove  around  Wetona  in  a  sagging,  one-seated  cart 
and  never  made  any  money  because  he  did  honest 
work  and  charged  as  little  for  it  as  men  who  did  not. 
His  mortar  stuck,  and  his  bricks  did  not  crumble,  and 
his  lumber  did  not  crack.  Riches  are  not  acquired 
in  the  contracting  business  in  that  way.  Ed  Sheehan 
and  his  daughter  were  great  friends.  When  he  died 
(she  was  nineteen)  they  say  she  screamed  once,  like  a 
banshee,  and  dropped  to  the  floor. 

After  they  had  straightened  out  the  muddle  of  books 
in  Ed  Sheehan's  gritty,  dusty  little  office  Terry  turned 
her  piano-playing  talent  to  practical  account.  At 
twenty-one  she  was  still  playing  at  the  Bijou,  and  into 
her  face  was  creeping  the  first  hint  of  that  look  of 
sophistication  which  comes  from  daily  contact  with  the 
artificial  world  of  the  footlights.  It  is  the  look  of 
those  who  must  make  believe  as  a  business,  and  are 
a-weary.  You  see  it  developed  into  its  highest  degree 
in  the  face  of  a  veteran  comedian.  It  is  the  thing  that 
gives  the  look  of  utter  pathos  and  tragedy  to  the 
relaxed  expression  of  a  circus  clown. 

There  are,  in  a  small,  Mid- West  town  like  Wetona, 
just  two  kinds  of  girls.  Those  who  go  down  town 
Saturday  nights,  and  those  who  don't.  Terry,  if  she 
had  not  been  busy  with  her  job  at  the  Bijou,  would 


THAT'S  MARRIAGE  153 

have  come  in  the  first  group.  She  craved  excitement. 
There  was  little  chance  to  satisfy  such  craving  in 
Wetona,  but  she  managed  to  find  certain  means.  The 
travelling  men  from  the  Burke  House  just  across  the 
street  used  to  drop  in  at  the  Bijou  for  an  evening's 
entertainment.  They  usually  sat  well  toward  the 
front,  and  Terry's  expert  playing,  and  the  gloss  of  her 
black  hair,  and  her  piquant  profile  as  she  sometimes 
looked  up  toward  the  stage  for  a  signal  from  one  of 
the  performers,  caught  their  fancy,  and  held  it. 

Terry  did  not  accept  their  attentions  promiscuously. 
She  was  too  decent  a  girl  for  that.  But  she  found  her- 
self, at  the  end  of  a  year  or  two,  with  a  rather  large 
acquaintance  among  these  peripatetic  gentlemen.  You 
occasionally  saw  one  of  them  strolling  home  with  her. 
Sometimes  she  went  driving  with  one  of  them  of  a 
Sunday  afternoon.  And  she  rather  enjoyed  taking 
Sunday  dinner  at  the  Burke  Hotel  with  a  favoured 
friend.  She  thought  those  small-town  hotel  Sunday 
dinners  the  last  word  in  elegance.  The  roast  course 
was  always  accompanied  by  an  aqueous,  semi-frozen 
concoction  which  the  bill  of  fare  revealed  as  Roman 
punch.  It  added  a  royal  touch  to  the  repast,  even 
when  served  with  roast  pork.  I  don't  say  that  any  of 
these  Lotharios  snatched  a  kiss  during  a  Sunday 
afternoon  drive.  Or  that  Terry  slapped  him  promptly. 
But  either  seems  extremely  likely. 

Terry  was  twenty-two  when  Orville  Platt,  making 
his  initial  Wisconsin  trip  for  the  wholesale  grocery 


154  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

house  he  represented,  first  beheld  Terry's  piquant 
Irish  profile,  and  heard  her  deft  manipulation  of  the 
keys.  Orville  had  the  fat  man's  sense  of  rhythm  and 
love  of  music.  He  had  a  buttery  tenor  voice,  too,  of 
which  he  was  rather  proud. 

He  spent  three  days  in  Wetona  that  first  trip,  and 
every  evening  saw  him  at  the  Bijou,  first  row,  centre. 
He  stayed  through  two  shows  each  time,  and  before 
he  had  been  there  fifteen  minutes  Terry  was  conscious 
of  him  through  the  back  of  her  head.  In  fact  I  think 
that,  in  all  innocence,  she  rather  played  up  to  him. 
Orville  Platt  paid  no  more  heed  to  the  stage,  and  what 
was  occurring  thereon,  than  if  it  had  not  been.  He 
sat  looking  at  Terry,  and  waggling  his  head  in  time  to 
the  music.  Not  that  Terry  was  a  beauty.  But  she 
was  one  of  those  immaculately  clean  types.  That 
look  of  fragrant  cleanliness  was  her  chief  charm.  Her 
clear,  smooth  skin  contributed  to  it,  and  the  natural 
pencilling  of  her  eyebrows.  But  the  thing  that  accented 
it,  and  gave  it  a  last  touch,  was  the  way  in  which  her 
black  hair  came  down  in  a  little  point  just  in  the  centre 
of  her  forehead,  where  hair  meets  brow.  It  grew  to 
form  what  is  known  as  a  cow-lick.  (A  prettier  name 
for  it  is  widow's  peak.)  Your  eye  lighted  on  it, 
pleased,  and  from  it  travelled  its  gratified  way  down 
her  white  temples,  past  her  little  ears,  to  the  smooth 
black  coil  at  the  nape  of  her  neck.  It  was  a  trip  that 
rested  you. 

At  the  end  of  the  last  performance  on  the  second 


THAT'S  MARRIAGE  155 

night  of  his  visit  to  the  Bijou,  Orville  waited  until 
the  audience  had  begun  to  file  out.  Then  he  leaned 
forward  over  the  rail  that  separated  orchestra  from 
audience. 

"Could  you,"  he  said,  his  tones  dulcet,  "could  you 
oblige  me  with  the  name  of  that  last  piece  you  played?" 

Terry  was  stacking  her  music.  "  George !"  she  called, 
to  the  drum.  "Gentleman  wants  to  know  the  name 
of  that  last  piece."  And  prepared  to  leave. 

"'My  Georgia  Crackerjack',"  said  the  laconic  drum. 

Orville  Platt  took  a  hasty  side-step  in  the  direction 
of  the  door  toward  which  Terry  was  headed.  "It's  a 
pretty  thing,"  he  said,  fervently.  "An  awful  pretty 
thing.  Thanks.  It's  beautiful." 

Terry  flung  a  last  insult  at  him  over  her  shoulder: 
"Don't  thank  me  for  it.  I  didn't  write  it." 

Orville  Platt  did  not  go  across  the  street  to  the 
hotel.  He  wandered  up  Cass  street,  and  into  the  ten- 
o'clock  quiet  of  Main  street,  and  down  as  far  as  the 
park  and  back.  "Pretty  as  a  pink!  And  play!  .  .  . 
And  good,  too.  Good." 

A  fat  man  in  love. 

At  the  end  of  six  months  they  were  married.  Terry 
was  surprised  into  it.  Not  that  she  was  not  fond  of 
him.  She  was;  and  grateful  to  him,  as  well.  For, 
pretty  as  she  was,  no  man  had  ever  before  asked  Terry 
to  be  his  wife.  They  had  made  love  to  her.  They  had 
paid  court  to  her.  They  had  sent  her  large  boxes 
of  stale  drug-store  chocolates,  and  called  her  endear- 


156  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

ing  names  as  they  made  cautious  declaration  such 
as: 

"I've  known  a  lot  of  girls,  but  you've  got  something 
different.  I  don't  know.  You've  got  so  much  sense. 
A  fellow  can  chum  around  with  you.  Little  pal." 

Orville's  headquarters  were  Wetona.  They  rented 
a  comfortable,  seven-room  house  in  a  comfortable, 
middle-class  neighbourhood,  and  Terry  dropped  the 
red  velvet  turbans  and  went  in  for  picture  hats  and 
paradise  aigrettes.  Orville  bought  her  a  piano  whose 
tone  was  so  good  that  to  her  ear,  accustomed  to  the 
metallic  discords  of  the  Bijou  instrument,  it  sounded 
out  of  tune.  She  played  a  great  deal  at  first,  but  un- 
consciously she  missed  the  sharp  spat  of  applause 
that  used  to  follow  her  public  performance.  She  would 
play  a  piece,  brilliantly,  and  then  her  hands  would 
drop  to  her  lap.  And  the  silence  of  her  own  sitting 
room  would  fall  flat  on  her  ears.  It  was  better  on  the 
evenings  when  Orville  was  home.  He  sang,  in  his 
throaty,  fat  man's  tenor,  to  Terry's  expert  accompani- 
ment. 

"This  is  better  than  playing  for  those  bum  actors, 
isn't  it,  hon?"  And  he  would  pinch  her  ear. 

"Sure"— listlessly. 

But  after  the  first  year  she  became  accustomed  to 
what  she  termed  private  life.  She  joined  an  afternoon 
sewing  club,  and  was  active  in  the  ladies'  branch  of 
the  U.  C.  T.  She  developed  a  knack  at  cooking,  too, 
and  Orville,  after  a  week  or  ten  days  of  hotel  fare  in 


THAT'S  MARRIAGE  157 

small  Wisconsin  towns,  would  come  home  to  sea-foam 
biscuits,  and  real  soup,  and  honest  pies  and  cake. 
Sometimes,  in  the  midst  of  an  appetising  meal  he  would 
lay  down  his  knife  and  fork  and  lean  back  hi  his  chair, 
and  regard  the  cool  and  unruffled  Terry  with  a  sort 
of  reverence  in  his  eyes.  Then  he  would  get  up,  and 
come  around  to  the  other  side  of  the  table,  and  tip  her 
pretty  face  up  to  his. 

"I'll  bet  I'll  wake  up,  some  day,  and  find  out  it's 
all  a  dream.  You  know  this  kind  of  thing  doesn't 
really  happen — not  to  a  dub  like  me." 

One  year;  two;  three;  four.  Routine.  A  little 
boredom.  Some  impatience.  She  began  to  find  fault 
with  the  very  things  she  had  liked  in  him:  his  super- 
neatness;  his  fondness  for  dashing  suit  patterns;  his 
throaty  tenor;  his  worship  of  her.  And  the  flap. 
Oh,  above  all,  that  flap!  That  little,  innocent,  mean- 
ingless mannerism  that  made  her  tremble  with  nervous- 
ness. She  hated  it  so  that  she  could  not  trust  herself 
to  speak  of  it  to  him.  That  was  the  trouble.  Had 
she  spoken  of  it,  laughingly  or  hi  earnest,  before  it 
became  an  obsession  with  her,  that  hideous  breakfast 
quarrel,  with  its  taunts,  and  revilings,  and  open  hate, 
might  never  have  come  to  pass.  For  that  matter, 
any  one  of  those  foreign  fellows  with  the  guttural  names 
and  the  psychoanalytical  minds  could  have  located 
her  trouble  in  one  seance. 

Terry  Platt  herself  didn't  know  what  was  the  matter 
with  her.  She  would  have  denied  that  anything  was 


158  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

wrong.  She  didn't  even  throw  her  hands  above  her 
head  and  shriek:  "I  want  to  live!  I  want  to  live! 
I  want  to  live!"  like  a  lady  in  a  play.  She  only  knew 
she  was  sick  of  sewing  at  the  Wetona  West-End  Red 
Cross  shop;  sick  of  marketing,  of  home  comforts,  of 
Orville,  of  the  flap. 

Orville,  you  may  remember,  left  at  8.19.  The 
11.23  bore  Terry  Chicago  ward.  She  had  left  the 
house  as  it  was — beds  unmade,  rooms  unswept, 
breakfast  table  uncleared.  She  intended  never  to  come 
back. 

Now  and  then  a  picture  of  th£  chaos  she  had  left 
behind  would  flash  across  her  order-loving  mind.  The 
spoon  on  the  table-cloth.  Orville's  pajamas  dangling 
over  the  bathroom  chair.  The  coffee-pot  on  the  gas 
stove. 

"Pooh!    What  do  I  care?" 

In  her  pocketbook  she  had  a  tidy  sum  saved  out 
of  the  housekeeping  money.  She  was  naturally  thrifty, 
and  Orville  had  never  been  niggardly.  Her  meals 
when  Orville  was  on  the  road,  had  been  those  sketchy, 
haphazard  affairs  with  which  women  content  them- 
selves when  their  household  is  manless.  At  noon  she 
went  into  the  dining  car  and  ordered  a  flaunting  little 
repast  of  chicken  salad  and  asparagus,  and  Neapolitan 
ice  cream.  The  men  in  the  dining  car  eyed  her  specu- 
latively  and  with  appreciation.  Then  their  glance 
dropped  to  the  third  finger  of  her  left  hand,  and 
wandered  away.  She  had  meant  to  remove  it.  In 


THAT'S  MARRIAGE  159 

fact,  she  had  taken  it  off  and  dropped  it  into  her  bag. 
But  her  hand  felt  so  queer,  so  unaccustomed,  so  naked, 
that  she  had  found  herself  slipping  the  narrow  band  on 
again,  and  her  thumb  groped  for  it,  gratefully. 

It  was  almost  five  o'clock  when  she  reached  Chicago. 
She  felt  no  uncertainty  or  bewilderment.  She  had  been 
in  Chicago  three  or  four  times  since  her  marriage.  She 
went  to  a  down  town  hotel.  It  was  too  late,  she  told 
herself,  to  look  for  a  more  inexpensive  room  that 
night.  When  she  had  tidied  herself  she  went  out. 
The  things  she  did  were  the  childish,  aimless  things 
that  one  does  who  finds  herself  in  possession  of  sudden 
liberty.  She  walked  up  State  Street,  and  stared  in 
the  windows;  came  back,  turned  into  Madison,  passed 
a  bright  little  shop  in  the  window  of  which  taffy- 
white  and  gold — was  being  wound  endlessly  and  fas- 
cinatingly about  a  double- join  ted  machine.  She  went 
in  and  bought  a  sackful,  and  wandered  on  down  the 
street,  munching. 

She  had  supper  at  one  of  those  white-tiled  sarcophagi 
that  emblazon  Chicago's  down  town  side  streets.  It 
had  been  her  original  intention  to  dine  in  state  in  the 
rose-and-gold  dining  room  of  her  hotel.  She  had 
even  thought  daringly  of  lobster.  But  at  the  last 
moment  she  recoiled  from  the  idea  of  dining  alone  in 
that  wilderness  of  tables  so  obviously  meant  for  two. 

After  her  supper  she  went  to  a  picture  show.  She  was 
amazed  to  find  there,  instead  of  the  accustomed  orches- 
tra, a  pipe-organ  that  panted  and  throbbed  and  rumbled 


160  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

over  lugubrious  classics.  The  picture  was  about  a 
faithless  wife.  Terry  left  in  the  middle  of  it. 

She  awoke  next  morning  at  seven,  as  usual,  started 
up  wildly,  looked  around,  and  dropped  back.  Nothing 
to  get  up  for.  The  knowledge  did  not  fill  her  with  a 
rush  of  relief.  She  would  have  her  breakfast  in  bed! 
She  telephoned  for  it,  languidly.  But  when  it  came  she 
got  up  and  ate  it  from  the  table,  after  all.  Terry  was 
the  kind  of  woman  to  whom  a  pink  gingham  all-over 
apron,  and  a  pink  dust-cap  are  ravishingly  becoming  at 
seven  o'clock  in  the  morning.  That  sort  of  woman 
congenitally  cannot  enjoy  her  breakfast  in  bed. 

That  morning  she  found  a  fairly  comfortable  room, 
more  within  her  means,  on  the  north  side  in  the  board- 
ing house  district.  She  unpacked  and  hung  up  her 
clothes  and  drifted  down  town  again,  idly.  It  was 
noon  when  she  came  to  the  corner  of  State  and  Madison 
streets.  It  was  a  maelstrom  that  caught  her  up,  and 
buffeted  her  about,  and  tossed  her  helplessly  this  way 
and  that.  The  corner  of  Broadway  and  Forty-second 
streets  has  been  exploited  in  song  and  story  as  the 
world's  most  hazardous  human  whirlpool.  I've 
negotiated  that  corner.  I've  braved  the  square  in 
front  of  the  American  Express  Company's  office  in 
Paris,  June,  before  the  War.  I've  crossed  the  Strand 
at  ii  p.  m.  when  the  theatre  crowds  are  just  out.  And 
to  my  mind  the  corner  of  State  and  Madison  streets 
between  twelve  and  one,  mid-day,  makes  any  one  of 
these  dizzy  spots  look  bosky,  sylvan,  and  deserted. 


THAT'S  MARRIAGE  161 

The  thousands  jostled  Terry,  and  knocked  her 
hat  awry,  and  dug  her  with  unheeding  elbows,  and 
stepped  on  her  feet. 

"Say,  look  here! "  she  said,  once  futilely.    They 

did  not  stop  to  listen.  State  and  Madison  has  no  time 
for  Terrys  from  Wetona.  It  goes  its  way,  pellmell. 
If  it  saw  Terry  at  all  it  saw  her  only  as  a  prettyish  per- 
son, in  the  wrong  kind  of  suit  and  hat,  with  a  be- 
wildered, resentful  look  on  her  face. 

Terry  drifted  on  down  the  west  side  of  State  Street, 
with  the  hurrying  crowd.  State  and  Monroe.  A  sound 
came  to  Terry's  ears.  A  sound  familiar,  beloved. 
To  her  ear,  harassed  with  the  roar  and  crash,  with  the 
shrill  scream  of  the  crossing  policemen's  whistle,  with 
the  hiss  of  feet  shuffling  on  cement,  it  was  a  celestial 
strain.  She  looked  up,  toward  the  sound.  A  great 
second-story  window  opened  wide  to  the  street.  In 
it  a  girl  at  a  piano,  and  a  man,  red-faced,  singing 
through  a  megaphone.  And  on  a  flaring  red  and  green 
sign: 

BERNIE  GOTTSCHALK'S  MUSIC  HOUSE! 

COME  IN!  HEAR  BERNIE  GOTTSCHALK'S  LATEST 
HIT!  THE  HEART-THROB  SONG  THAT  HAS  GOT  'EM  ALL! 
THE  SONG  THAT  MADE  THE  KAISER  CRAWL! 

"/  COME  FROM  PARIS,  ILLINOIS,  BUT  OH! 
YOU  PARIS,  FRANCE! 

I  USEJ5  TO  WEAR  BLUE  OVERALLS  BUT 
NOW  ITS  KHAKI  PANTS." 

COME  IN!    COME  IN! 


162  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

Terry  accepted. 

She  followed  the  sound  of  the  music.  Around  the 
corner.  Up  a  little  flight  of  stairs.  She  entered  the 
realm  of  Euterpe;  Euterpe  with  her  back  hair  frizzed; 
Euterpe  with  her  flowing  white  robe  replaced  by  soiled 
white  boots  that  failed  to  touch  the  hem  of  an  empire- 
waisted  blue  serge;  Euterpe  abandoning  her  lyre  for 
jazz.  She  sat  at  the  piano,  a  red-haired  young  lady 
whose  familiarity  with  the  piano  had  bred  contempt. 
Nothing  else  could  have  accounted  for  her  treatment 
of  it.  Her  fingers,  tipped  with  sharp-pointed  grey  and 
glistening  nails,  clawed  the  keys  with  a  dreadful 
mechanical  motion.  There  were  stacks  of  music- 
sheets  on  counters,  and  shelves,  and  dangling  from 
overhead  wires.  The  girl  at  the  piano  never  ceased 
playing.  She  played  mostly  by  request.  A  prospec- 
tive purchaser  would  mumble  something  in  the  ear  of 
one  of  the  clerks.  The  fat  man  with  the  megaphone 
would  bawl  out,  "  'Hicky  Bloof  Miss  Ryan."  And 
Miss  Ryan  would  oblige.  She  made  a  hideous  rattle 
and  crash  and  clatter  of  sound  compared  to  which  an 
Indian  tom-tom  would  have  seemed  as  dulcet  as  the 
strumming  of  a  lute  in  a  lady's  boudoir. 

Terry  joined  the  crowds  about  the  counter.  The 
girl  at  the  piano  was  not  looking  at  the  keys.  Her 
head  was  screwed  around  over  her  left  shoulder  and 
as  she  played  she  was  holding  forth  animatedly  to 
a  girl  friend  who  had  evidently  dropped  in  from  some 
store  or  office  during  the  lunch  hour.  Now  and  again 


THAT'S  MARRIAGE  163 

the  fat  man  paused  in  his  vocal  efforts  to  reprimand 
her  for  her  slackness.  She  paid  no  heed.  There  was 
something  gruesome,  uncanny,  about  the  way  her 
ringers  went  their  own  way  over  the  defenceless  keys. 
Her  conversation  with  the  frowzy  little  girl  went  on. 

"Wha'd  he  say?"     (Over  her  shoulder). 

"Oh,  helaffed." 

"Well,  didjago?" 

"Me!    Well,  whutya  think  I  yam,  anyway?" 

"I  woulda  took  a  chanst." 

The  fat  man  rebelled. 

"Look  here!  Get  busy!  What  are  you  paid  for? 
Talkin'  or  playin'?  Huh?" 

The  person  at  the  piano,  openly  reproved  thus  before 
her  friend,  lifted  her  uninspired  hands  from  the  keys 
and  spake.  When  she  had  finished  she  rose. 

"But  you  can't  leave  now,"  the  megaphone  man 
argued.  "Right  in  the  rush  hour." 

"  I'm  gone,"  said  the  girl.  The  fat  man  looked  about, 
helplessly.  He  gazed  at  the  abandoned  piano,  as  though 
it  must  go  on  of  its  own  accord.  Then  at  the  crowd. 
"Where's  Miss  Schwimmer?"  he  demanded  of  a  clerk. 

"Out  to  lunch." 

Terry  pushed  her  way  to  the  edge  of  the  counter  and 
leaned  over.  "  I  can  play  for  you,"  she  said. 

The  man  looked  at  her.    "Sight?" 

"Yes." 

"Come  on." 

Terry  went  around  to  the  other  side  of  the  counter, 


164  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

took  off  her  hat  and  coat,  rubbed  her  hands  together 
briskly,  sat  down  and  began  to  play.  The  crowd  edged 
closer. 

It  is  a  curious  study,  this  noonday  crowd  that  gathers 
to  sate  its  music-hunger  on  the  scraps  vouchsafed  it 
by  Bernie  Gottschalk's  Music  House.  Loose-lipped, 
slope-shouldered  young  men  with  bad  complexions  and 
slender  hands.  Girls  whose  clothes  are  an  unconscious 
satire  on  present-day  fashions.  On  their  faces,  as  they 
listen  to  the  music,  is  a  look  of  peace  and  dreaming. 
They  stand  about,  smiling  a  wistful  half  smile.  It  is 
much  the  same  expression  that  steals  over  the  face  of 
a  smoker  who  has  lighted  his  after-dinner  cigar,  or  of 
a  drug  victim  who  is  being  lulled  by  his  opiate.  The 
music  seems  to  satisfy  a  something  within  them. 
Faces  dull,  eyes  lustreless,  they  listen  in  a  sort  of 
trance. 

Terry  played  on.  She  played  as  Terry  Sheehan  used 
to  play.  She  played  as  no  music  hack  at  Bernie  Gotts- 
chalk's had  ever  played  before.  The  crowd  swayed 
a  little  to  the  sound  of  it.  Some  kept  tune  with  little 
jerks  of  the  shoulder — the  little  hitching  movement 
of  the  rag-time  dancer  whose  blood  is  filled  with  the 
fever  of  syncopation.  Even  the  crowd  flowing  down 
State  Street  must  have  caught  the  rhythm  of  it,  for 
the  room  soon  filled. 

At  two  o'clock  the  crowd  began  to  thin.  Business 
would  be  slack,  now,  until  five,  when  it  would  again 
pick  up  until  closing  time  at  six. 


THAT'S  MARRIAGE  165 

The  fat  vocalist  put  down  his  megaphone,  wiped 
his  forehead,  and  regarded  Terry  with  a  warm  blue 
eye.  He  had  just  finished  singing  "I've  Wandered 
Far  from  Dear  Old  Mother's  Knee."  (Bernie  Gotts- 
chalk  Inc.  Chicago.  New  York.  You  can't  get  bit 
with  a  Gottschalk  hit.  15  cents  each.) 

"Girlie,"  he  said,  emphatically,  "You  sure — can — 
play!"  He  came  over  to  her  at  the  piano  and  put  a 
stubby  hand  on  her  shoulder.  "Yessir!  Those  little 
fingers " 

Terry  just  turned  her  head  to  look  down  her  nose 
at  the  moist  hand  resting  on  her  shoulder.  "Those 
little  fingers  are  going  to  meet  your  face — suddenly — 
if  you  don't  move  on." 

"Who  gave  you  your  job?"    demanded  the  fat  man. 

"Nobody.  I  picked  it  myself.  You  can  have  it  if 
you  want  it." 

"Can't  you  take  a  joke?" 

"Label  yours." 

As  the  crowd  dwindled  she  played  less  feverishly, 
but  there  was  nothing  slipshod  about  her  performance. 
The  chubby  songster  found  time  to  proffer  brief 
explanations  in  asides.  "They  want  the  patriotic  stuff. 
It  used  to  be  all  that  Hawaiian  dope,  and  Wild  Irish 
Rose  junk,  and  songs  about  wanting  to  go  back  to 
every  place  from  Dixie  to  Duluth.  But  now  seems 
it's  all  these  here  flag  raisers.  Honestly,  I'm  so 
sick  of  'em  I  got  a  notion  to  enlist  to  get  away  from 
it." 


166  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

Terry  eyed  him  with  withering  briefness.  "A  little 
training  wouldn't  ruin  your  figure." 

She  had  never  objected  to  Orville's  embonpoint. 
But  then,  Orville  was  a  different  sort  of  fat  man;  pink- 
cheeked,  springy,  immaculate. 

At  four  o'clock,  as  she  was  in  the  chorus  of  "Isn't 
There  Another  Joan  of  Arc?"  a  melting  masculine 
voice  from  the  other  side  of  the  counter  said,  "  Pardon 
me.  What's  that  you're  playing?" 

Terry  told  him.    She  did  not  look  up. 

"I  wouldn't  have  known  it.  Played  like  that — a 
second  Marseillaise.  If  the  words — what  are  the 
words?  Let  me  see  a " 

"Show  the  gentleman  a  'Joan',"  Terry  commanded 
briefly,  over  her  shoulder.  The  fat  man  laughed  a 
wheezy  laugh.  Terry  glanced  around,  still  playing, 
and  encountered  the  gaze  of  two  melting  masculine 
eyes  that  matched  the  melting  masculine  voice.  The 
songster  waved  a  hand  uniting  Terry  and  the  eyes  in 
informal  introduction. 

"Mr.  Leon  Sammett,  the  gentleman  who  sings  the 
Gottschalk  songs  wherever  songs  are  heard.  And 
Mrs. — that  is — and  Mrs.  Sammett— 

Terry  turned.  A  sleek,  swarthy  world-old  young 
man  with  the  fashionable  concave  torso,  and  alarmingly 
convex  bone-rimmed  glasses.  Through  them  his 
darkly  luminous  gaze  glowed  upon  Terry.  To  escape 
their  warmth  she  sent  her  own  gaze  past  him  to  encoun- 
ter the  arctic  stare  of  the  large  blonde  person  who  had 


THAT'S  MARRIAGE  167 

been  included  so  lamely  in  the  introduction.  And  at 
that  the  frigidity  of  that  stare  softened,  melted,  dis- 
solved. 

"Why  Terry  Sheehan!    What  in  the  world!" 

Terry's  eyes  bored  beneath  the  layers  of  flabby  fat. 
"It's — why,  it's  Ruby  Watson,  isn't  it?  Eccentric 
Song  and  Dance " 

She  glanced  at  the  concave  young  man  and  faltered. 
He  was  not  Jim,  of  the  Bijou  days.  From  him  her 
eyes  leaped  back  to  the  fur-bedecked  splendour  of 
the  woman.  The  plump  face  went  so  painfully  red 
that  the  makeup  stood  out  on  it,  a  distinct  layer,  like 
thin  ice  covering  flowing  water.  As  she  surveyed 
that  bulk  Terry  realised  that  while  Ruby  might  still 
claim  eccentricity,  her  song  and  dance  days  were  over. 
"That's  ancient  history,  m'dear.  I  haven't  been 
working  for  three  years.  What're  you  doing  in  this 
joint?  I'd  heard  you'd  done  well  for  yourself.  That 
you  were  married." 

"lam.    That  is  I— weU,  I  am.    I— 

At  that  the  dark  young  man  leaned  over  and  patted 
Terry's  hand  that  lay  on  the  counter.  He  smiled. 
His  own  hand  was  incredibly  slender,  long,  and  tapering. 

"That's  all  right,"  he  assured  her,  and  smiled. 
"You  two  girls  can  have  a  reunion  later.  What  I 
want  to  know  is  can  you  play  by  ear?" 

"Yes,  but— 

He  leaned  far  over  the  counter.  "I  knew  it  the 
minute  I  heard  you  play.  You've  got  the  touch. 


i68  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

Now  listen.    See  if  you  can  get  this,  and  fake  the  bass." 

He  fixed  his  sombre  and  hypnotic  eyes  on  Terry. 
His  mouth  screwed  up  into  a  whistle.  The  tune — a 
tawdry  but  haunting  little  melody — came  through  his 
lips.  And  Terry's  quick  ear  sensed  that  every  note  was 
fiat.  She  turned  back  to  the  piano.  "Of  course  you 
know  you  flatted  every  note,"  she  said. 

This  time  it  was  the  blonde  woman  who  laughed, 
and  the  man  who  flushed.  Terry  cocked  her  head  just 
a  little  to  one  side,  like  a  knowing  bird,  looked  up 
into  space  beyond  the  piano  top,  and  played  the  lilting 
little  melody  with  charm  and  fidelity.  The  dark  young 
man  followed  her  with  a  wagging  of  the  head  and  little 
jerks  of  both  outspread  hands.  His  expression  was 
beatific,  enraptured.  He  hummed  a  little  under  his 
breath  and  any  one  who  was  music  wise  would  have 
known  that  he  was  just  a  half-beat  behind  her  all 
the  way. 

When  she  had  finished  he  sighed  deeply,  ecstatically. 
He  bent  his  lean  frame  over  the  counter  and,  despite 
his  swart  colouring,  seemed  to  glitter  upon  her — his 
eyes,  his  teeth,  his  very  finger-nails. 

"  Something  led  me  here.  I  never  come  up  on  Tues- 
days. But  something — — " 

"You  was  going  to  complain,"  put  in  his  lady, 
heavily,  "about  that  Teddy  Sykes  at  the  Palace 
Gardens  singing  the  same  songs  this  week  that  you 
been  boosting  at  the  Inn." 

He  put  up  a  vibrant,  peremptory  hand.     "Bah I 


THAT'S  MARRIAGE  169 

What  does  that  matter  now!  What  does  anything 
matter  now!  Listen  Miss — ah — Miss? " 

"PI— Sheehan.    Terry  Sheehan." 

He  gazed  off  a  moment  into  space.  "H'm.  'Leon 
Sammett  in  Songs.  Miss  Terry  Sheehan  at  the  Piano/ 
That  doesn't  sound  bad.  Now  listen,  Miss  Sheehan. 
I'm  singing  down  at  the  University  Inn.  The  Gotts- 
chalk  song  hits.  I  guess  you  know  my  work.  But  I 
want  to  talk  to  you,  private.  It's  something  to  your 
interest.  I  go  on  down  at  the  Inn  at  six.  Will  you 
come  and  have  a  little  something  with  Ruby  and  me? 
Now?" 

"Now?"  faltered  Terry,  somewhat  helplessly.  Things 
seemed  to  be  moving  rather  swiftly  for  her,  accustomed 
as  she  was  to  the  peaceful  routine  of  the  past  four 
years. 

"Get  your  hat.  It's  your  life  chance.  Wait  till 
you  see  your  name  in  two-foot  electrics  over  the 
front  of  every  big-time  house  in  the  country.  You've 
got  music  in  you.  Tie  to  me  and  you're  made."  He 
turned  to  the  woman  beside  him.  "  Isn't  that  so,  Rube?" 

"Sure.  Look  at  me!"  One  would  not  have  thought 
there  could  be  so  much  subtle  vindictiveness  in  a  fat 
blonde. 

Sammett  whipped  out  a  watch.  "Just  three-quarters 
of  an  hour.  Come  on,  girlie." 

His  conversation  had  been  conducted  in  an  urgent 
undertone,  with  side  glances  at  the  fat  man  with  the 
megaphone.  Terry  approached  him  now. 


170  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

"I'm  leaving  now,"  she  said. 

"Oh,  no  you're  not.  Six  o'clock  is  your  quitting 
time." 

In  which  he  touched  the  Irish  in  Terry.  "Any  time 
I  quit  is  my  quitting  time."  She  went  in  quest  of  hat 
and  coat  much  as  the  girl  had  done  whose  place  she 
had  taken  early  in  the  day.  The  fat  man  followed 
her,  protesting.  Terry,  pinning  on  her  hat  tried  to 
ignore  him.  But  he  laid  one  plump  hand  on  her 
arm  and  kept  it  there,  though  she  tried  to  shake  him 
off. 

' '  Now,  listen  to  me.  That  boy  wouldn'  t  mind  putting 
his  heel  on  your  face  if  he  thought  it  would  bring  him 
up  a  step.  I  know'm.  Y'see  that  walking  stick  he's 
carrying?  Well,  compared  to  the  yellow  stripe  that's 
in  him,  that  cane  is  a  lead  pencil.  He's  a  song  tout, 
that's  all  he  is."  Then,  more  feverishly,  as  Terry 
tried  to  pull  away:  "Wait  a  minute.  You're  a  decent 

girl.  I  want  to Why,  he  can't  even  sing  a  note 

without  you  give  it  to  him  first.  He  can  put  a  song 
over,  yes.  But  how?  By  flashin'  that  toothy  grin  of 
his  and  talkin'  every  word  of  it.  Don't  you 

But  Terry  freed  herself  with  a  final  jerk  and  whipped 
around  the  counter.  The  two,  who  had  been  talking 
together  in  an  undertone,  turned  to  welcome  her. 
"We've  got  a  half  hour.  Come  on.  It's  just  over  to 
Clark  and  up  a  block  or  so." 

If  you  know  Chicago  at  all,  you  know  the  Univer- 
sity Inn,  that  gloriously  intercollegiate  institution  which 


THAT'S  MARRIAGE  171 

welcomes  any  graduate  of  any  school  of  experience, 
and  guarantees  a  post-graduate  course  in  less  time  than 
any  similar  haven  of  knowledge.  Down  a  flight  of 
stairs  and  into  the  unwonted  quiet  that  reigns  during 
the  hour  of  low  potentiality,  between  five  and  six, 
the  three  went,  and  seated  themselves  at  a  table  in 
an  obscure  corner.  A  waiter  brought  them  things 
in  little  glasses,  though  no  order  had  been  given.  The 
woman  who  had  been  Ruby  Watson  was  so  silent  as 
to  be  almost  wordless.  But  the  man  talked  rapidly. 
He  talked  well,  too.  The  same  quality  that  enabled 
him,  voiceless  though  he  was,  to  boost  a  song  to  success, 
was  making  his  plea  sound  plausible  in  Terry's  ears  now. 
"I've  got  to  go  and  make  up  in  a  few  minutes.  So 
get  this.  I'm  not  going  to  stick  down  in  this  basement 
eating  house  forever.  I've  got  too  much  talent.  If 
I  only  had  a  voice — I  mean  a  singing  voice.  But  I 
haven't.  But  then,  neither  has  Georgie  Cohan,  and 
I  can't  see  that  it's  wrecked  his  life  any.  Look  at 
Elsie  Janis!  But  she  sings.  And  they  like  it!  Now 
listen.  I've  got  a  song.  It's  my  own.  That  bit  you 
played  for  me  up  at  Gottschalk's  is  part  of  the  chorus. 
But  it's  the  words  that'll  go  big.  They're  great.  It's 
an  aviation  song,  see?  Airship  stuff.  They're  yelling 
that  it's  the  airyoplanes  that're  going  to  win  this  war. 
Well,  I'll  help  'em.  This  song  is  going  to  put  the  av- 
iator where  he  belongs.  It's  going  to  be  the  big  song 
of  the  war.  It's  going  to  make  'Tipperary'  sound  like 
a  Moody  and  Sankey  hymn.  It's  the " 


172  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

Ruby  lifted  her  heavy-lidded  eyes  and  sent  him  a 
meaning  look.  "Get  down  to  business,  Leon.  I'll 
tell  her  how  good  you  are  while  you're  making 
up." 

He  shot  her  a  malignant  glance,  but  took  her  advice. 
"Now  what  I've  been  looking  for  for  years  is  somebody 
who  has  got  the  music  knack  to  give  me  the  accom- 
paniment just  a  quarter  of  a  jump  ahead  of  my  voice, 
see?  I  can  follow  like  a  lamb,  but  I've  got  to  have 
that  feeler  first.  It's  more  than  a  knack.  It's  a  gift. 
And  you've  got  it.  I  know  it  when  I  see  it.  I  want  to 
get  away  from  this  cabaret  thing.  There's  nothing 
in  it  for  a  man  of  my  talent.  I'm  gunning  for  vaude- 
ville. But  they  won't  book  me  without  a  tryout. 

And  when  they  hear  my  voice  they Well,  if  me 

and  you  work  together  we  can  fool  'em.  The  song's 
great.  And  my  makeup's  one  of  these  av-iation  cos- 
tumes to  go  with  the  song,  see?  Pants  tight  in  the  knee 
and  baggy  on  the  hips.  And  a  coat  with  one  of  those 
full  skirt  whaddyoucall'ems " 

"Peplums,"  put  in  Ruby,  placidly. 

"Sure.  And  the  girls'll  be  wild  about  it.  And  the 
words!"  he  began  to  sing,  gratingly  off-key: 

"Put  on  your  sky  clothes, 

Put  on  your  fly  clothes 

And  take  a  trip  with  me. 

We'll  sail  so  high 

Up  in  the  sky 

We'll  drop  a  bomb  from  Mercury." 

"Why,    that's    awfully    cute!"    exclaimed    Terry. 


THAT'S  MARRIAGE  173 

Until  now  her  opinion  of  Mr.  Sammett's  talents  had 
not  been  on  a  level  with  his. 

"  Yeh,  but  wait  till  you  hear  the  second  verse.  That's 
only  part  of  the  chorus.  You  see,  he's  supposed  to 
be  talking  to  a  French  girl.  He  says : 

I'll  parlez-vous  in  Franfais  plain, 
You'll  answer,  'Cher  Amtricain, 
We'll  both " 

The  six  o'clock  lights  blazed  up,  suddenly.  A  sad- 
looking  group  of  men  trailed  in  and  made  for  a  corner 
where  certain  bulky,  shapeless  bundles  were  soon 
revealed  as  those  glittering  and  tortuous  instruments 
which  go  to  make  a  jazz  band. 

"You  better  go,  Lee.  The  crowd  comes  in  awful 
early  now,  with  all  those  buyers  in  town." 

Both  hands  on  the  table  he  half  rose,  reluctantly, 
still  talking.  "  I've  got  three  other  songs.  They  make 
Gottschalk's  stuff  look  sick.  All  I  want's  a  chance. 
What  I  want  you  to  do  is  accompaniment.  On  the 
stage,  see?  Grand  piano.  And  a  swell  set.  I  haven't 
quite  made  up  my  mind  to  it.  But  a  kind  of  an  army 
camp  room,  see?  And  maybe  you  dressed  as  Liberty. 
Anyway,  it'll  be  new,  and  a  knock-out.  If  only  we  can 
get  away  with  the  voice  thing.  Say,  if  Eddie  Foy, 
all  those  years  never  had  a— 

The  band  opened  with  a  terrifying  clash  of  cymbal, 
and  thump  of  drum.  "Back  at  the  end  of  my  first 
turn,"  he  said  as  he  fled.  Terry  followed  his  lithe, 
electric  figure.  She  turned  to  meet  the  heavy-lidded 


174  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

gaze  of  the  woman  seated  opposite.  She  relaxed,  then, 
and  sat  back  with  a  little  sigh.  "Well!  If  he  talks 
that  way  to  the  managers  I  don't  see " 

Ruby  laughed  a  mirthless  little  laugh.  ' '  Talk  doesn't 
get  it  over  with  the  managers,  honey.  You've  got  to 
deliver." 

"Well,  but  he's — that  song  is  a  good  one.  I  don't 
say  it's  as  good  as  he  thinks  it  is,  but  it's  good." 

"Yes,  "admitted  the  woman,  grudgingly,  "it's  good." 

"Well,  then?" 

The  woman  beckoned  a  waiter;  he  nodded  and 
vanished,  and  reappeared  with  a  glass  that  was  twin 
to  the  one  she  had  just  emptied.  "Does  he  look  like 
he  knew  French?  Or  could  make  a  rhyme?" 

"But  didn't  he?    Doesn't  he?" 

"The  words  were  written  by  a  little  French  girl 
who  used  to  skate  down  here  last  winter,  when  the 
craze  was  on.  She  was  stuck  on  a  Chicago  kid  who 
went  over  to  fly  for  the  French." 

"But  the  music?" 

"There  was  a  Russian  girl  who  used  to  dance  in  the 
cabaret  and  she " 

Terry's  head  came  up  with  a  characteristic  little 
jerk.  "I  don't  believe  it!" 

"Better."  She  gazed  at  Terry  with  the  drowsy  look 
that  was  so  different  from  the  quick,  clear  glance  of  the 
Ruby  Watson  who  used  to  dance  so  nimbly  in  the  Old 
Bijou  days.  "What'd  you  and  your  husband  quarrel 
about,  Terry?" 


THAT'S  MARRIAGE  175 

Terry  was  furious  to  feel  herself  flushing.  "Oh, 
nothing.  He  just — I — it  was—  Say,  how  did  you 
know  we'd  quarrelled?" 

And  suddenly  all  the  fat  woman's  apathy  dropped 
from  her  like  a  garment  and  some  of  the  old  sparkle 
and  animation  illumined  her  heavy  face.  She  pushed 
her  glass  aside  and  leaned  forward  on  her  folded  arms, 
so  that  her  face  was  close  to  Terry's. 

"Terry  Sheehan,  I  know  you've  quarrelled,  and  I 
know  just  what  it  was  about.  Oh,  I  don't  mean  the 
very  thing  it  was  about;  but  the  kind  of  thing.  I'm 
going  to  do  something  for  you,  Terry,  that  I  wouldn't 
take  the  trouble  to  do  for  most  women.  But  I  guess 
I  ain't  had  all  the  softness  knocked  out  of  me  yet, 
though  it's  a  wonder.  And  I  guess  I  remember  too 
plain  the  decent  kid  you  was  in  the  old  days.  What 
was  the  name  of  that  little  small-time  house  me  and 
Jim  used  to  play?  Bijou,  that's  it;  Bijou." 

The  band  struck  up  a  new  tune.  Leon  Sammett— 
slim,  sleek,  lithe  in  his  evening  clothes — appeared  with 
a  little  fair  girl  in  pink  chiffon.  The  woman  reached 
across  the  table  and  put  one  pudgy,  jewelled  hand  on 
Terry's  arm.  "He'll  be  through  in  ten  minutes.  Now 
listen  to  me.  I  left  Jim  four  years  ago,  and  there 
hasn't  been  a  minute  since  then,  day  or  night,  when  I 
wouldn't  have  crawled  back  to  him  on  my  hands  and 
knees  if  I  could.  But  I  couldn't.  He  wouldn't  have 
me  now.  How  could  he?  How  do  I  know  you've 
quarrelled?  I  can  see  it  in  your  eyes.  They  look  just 


176  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

the  way  mine  have  felt  for  four  years,  that's  how.  I 
met  up  with  this  boy,  and  there  wasn't  anybody  to 
do  the  turn  for  me  that  I'm  trying  to  do  for  you.  Now 
get  this.  I  left  Jim  because  when  he  ate  corn  on  the 
cob  he  always  closed  his  eyes  and  it  drove  me  wild. 
Don't  laugh." 

"I'm  not  laughing,"  said  Terry. 

"Women  are  like  that.  One  night — we  was  playing 
Fond  du  Lac;  I  remember  just  as  plain — we  was 
eating  supper  and  Jim  reached  for  one  of  those  big 
yellow  ears,  and  buttered  and  salted  it,  and  me  kind  of 
hanging  on  to  the  edge  of  the  table  with  my  nails. 
Seemed  to  me  if  he  shut  his  eyes  when  he  put  his 
teeth  into  that  ear  of  corn  I'd  scream.  And  he  did. 
And  I  screamed.  And  that's  all." 

Terry  sat  staring  at  her  with  a  wide-eyed  stare, 
like  a  sleep  walker.  Then  she  wet  her  lips,  slowly. 
"But  that's  almost  the  very " 

"Kid,  go  on  back  home.  I  don't  know  whether  it's 
too  late  or  not,  but  go  anyway.  If  you've  lost  him  I 
suppose  it  ain't  any  more  than  you  deserve,  but  I 
hope  to  God  you  don't  get  your  desserts  this  time. 
He's  almost  through.  If  he  sees  you  going  he  can't 
quit  in  the  middle  of  his  song  to  stop  you.  He'll  know 
I  put  you  wise,  and  he'll  prob'ly  half  kill  me  for  it. 
But  it's  worth  it.  You  get." 

And  Terry— dazed,  shaking,  but  grateful— fled. 
Down  the  noisy  aisle,  up  the  stairs,  to  the  street. 
Back  to  her  rooming  house.  Out  again,  with  her  suit- 


THAT'S  MARRIAGE  177 

case,  and  into  the  right  railroad  station  somehow,  at 
last.  Not  another  Wetona  train  until  midnight.  She 
shrank  into  a  remote  corner  of  the  waiting  room 
and  there  she  huddled  until  midnight  watching  the  en- 
trances like  a  child  who  is  fearful  of  ghosts  in  the  night. 

The  hands  of  the  station  clock  seemed  fixed  and  im- 
movable. The  hour  between  eleven  and  twelve  was 
endless.  She  was  on  the  train.  It  was  almost  morning. 
It  was  morning.  Dawn  was  breaking.  She  was  home! 
She  had  the  house  key  clutched  tightly  in  her  hand 
long  before  she  turned  Schroeder's  corner.  Suppose 
he  had  come  home!  Suppose  he  had  jumped  a  town 
and  come  home  ahead  of  his  schedule.  They  had 
quarrelled  once  before,  and  he  had  done  that. 

Up  the  front  steps.  Into  the  house.  Not  a  sound. 
She  stood  there  a  moment  hi  the  early  morning  half- 
light.  She  peered  into  the  dining  room.  The  table, 
with  its  breakfast  debris,  was  as  she  had  left  it.  In 
the  kitchen  the  coffee  pot  stood  on  the  gas  stove. 
She  was  home.  She  was  safe.  She  ran  up  the  stairs, 
got  out  of  her  clothes  and  into  crisp  gingham  morning 
things.  She  flung  open  windows  everywhere.  Down- 
stairs once  more  she  plunged  into  an  orgy  of  cleaning. 
Dishes,  table,  stove,  floor,  rugs.  She  washed,  scoured, 
flapped,  swabbed,  polished.  By  eight  o'clock  she  had 
done  the  work  that  would  ordinarily  have  taken  until 
noon.  The  house  was  shining,  orderly,  and  redolent 
of  soapsuds. 

During  all  this  time  she  had  been  listening,  listening, 


178  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

with  her  sub-conscious  ear.  Listening  for  something 
she  had  refused  to  name  definitely  in  her  mind,  but 
listening,  just  the  same;  waiting. 

And  then,  at  eight  o'clock,  it  came.  The  rattle  of  a 
key  in  the  lock.  The  boom  of  the  front  door.  Firm 
footsteps. 

He  did  not  go  to  meet  her,  and  she  did  not  go  to 
meet  him.  They  came  together  and  were  in  each 
other's  arms.  She  was  weeping. 

"Now,  now,  old  girl.  What's  there  to  cry  about? 
Don't,  honey;  don't.  It's  all  right." 

She  raised  her  head  then,  to  look  at  him.  How  fresh, 
and  rosy,  and  big  he  seemed,  after  that  little  sallow, 
yellow  restaurant  rat. 

"How  did  you  get  here?  How  did  you  hap- 
pen  ?" 

"  Jumped  all  the  way  from  Ashland.  Couldn't  get 
a  sleeper,  so  I  sat  up  all  night.  I  had  to  come  back 
and  square  things  with  you,  Terry.  My  mind  just 
wasn't  on  my  work.  I  kept  thinking  how  I'd  talked — 
how  I'd  talked " 

"Oh,  Orville,  don't!  I  can't  bear Have  you 

had  your  breakfast?" 

"Why,  no.  The  train  was  an  hour  late.  You  know 
that  Ashland  train." 

But  she  was  out  of  his  arms  and  making  for  the 
kitchen.  "You  go  and  clean  up.  I'll  have  hot  biscuits 
and  everything  in  fifteen  minutes.  You  poor  boy. 
No  breakfast!" 


THAT'S  MARRIAGE  179 

She  made  good  her  promise.  It  could  not  have  been 
more  than  twenty  minutes  later  when  he  was  buttering 
his  third  feathery,  golden  brown  biscuit.  But  she  had 
eaten  nothing.  She  watched  him,  and  listened,  and 
again  her  eyes  were  sombre,  but  for  a  different  reason. 
He  broke  open  his  egg.  His  elbow  came  up  just  a  frac- 
tion of  an  inch.  Then  he  remembered,  and  flushed 
like  a  schoolboy,  and  brought  it  down  again,  carefully. 
And  at  that  she  gave  a  little  tremulous  cry,  and  rushed 
around  the  table  to  him. 

"Oh,  Orville!"  She  took  the  offending  elbow  in 
her  two  arms,  and  bent  and  kissed  the  rough  coat  sleeve. 

"Why,  Terry!    Don't,  honey.    Don't!'' 

"Oh,  Orville,  listen " 

"Yes." 

"Listen,  Orvffle- 

"  I'm  listening,  Terry." 

"I've  got  something  to  tell  you.  There's  something 
you've  got  to  know." 

"Yes,  I  know  it,  Terry.  I  knew  you'd  out  with  it, 
pretty  soon,  if  I  just  waited." 

She  lifted  an  amazed  face  from  his  shoulder  then, 
and  stared  at  him.  "But  how  could  you  know?  You 
couldn't!  How  could  you?" 

He  patted  her  shoulder  then,  gently.  "I  can  always 
tell.  When  you  have  something  on  your  mind  you 
always  take  up  a  spoon  of  coffee,  and  look  at  it,  and  kind 
of  joggle  it  back  and  forth  in  the  spoon,  and  then  dribble 
it  back  into  the  cup  again,  without  once  tasting  it. 


i8o  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

It  used  to  get  me  nervous  when  we  were  first  married 
watching  you.  But  now  I  know  it  just  means  you're 
worried  about  something,  and  I  wait,  and  pretty 

soon " 

"Oh,  Orville!"  she  cried,  then.    "Oh,  Orville!" 
"Now,  Terry.     Just  spill  it,  hon.     Just  spill  it  to 
dWdy.    And  you'll  feel  better." 


VI 

THE  WOMAN  WHO  TRIED  TO  BE  GOOD 

BEFORE  she  tried  to  be  a  good  woman  she  had 
been  a  very  bad  woman — so  bad  that  she  could 
trail  her  wonderful  apparel  up  and  down  Main  Street, 
from  the  Elm  Tree  Bakery  to  the  railroad  tracks,  with- 
out once  having  a  man  doff  his  hat  to  her  or  a  woman 
bow.  You  passed  her  on  the  street  with  a  surreptitious 
glance,  though  she  was  well  worth  looking  at — in  her 
furs  and  laces  and  plumes.  She  had  the  only  full- 
length  sealskin  coat  in  our  town,  and  Ganz'  shoe  store 
sent  to  Chicago  for  her  shoes.  Hers  were  the  miracu- 
lously small  feet  you  frequently  see  in  stout  women. 

Usually  she  walked  alone;  but  on  rare  occasions, 
especially  round  Christmas  time,  she  might  have  been 
seen  accompanied  by  some  silent,  dull-eyed,  stupid- 
looking  girl,  who  would  follow  her  dumbly  in  and  out 
of  stores,  stopping  now  and  then  to  admire  a  cheap 
comb  or  a  chain  set  with  flashy  imitation  stones — or, 
queerly  enough,  a  doll  with  yellow  hair  and  blue  eyes 
and  very  pink  cheeks.  But,  alone  or  in  company,  her 
appearance  in  the  stores  of  our  town  was  the  signal  for 
a  sudden  jump  in  the  cost  of  living.  The  storekeepers 

mulcted  her;    and  she  knew  it  and  paid  in  silence, 

1*1 


i82  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

for  she  was  of  the  class  that  has  no  redress.  She 
owned  the  House  With  the  Closed  Shutters,  near  the 
freight  depot — did  Blanche  Devine.  And  beneath  her 
silks  and  laces  and  furs  there  was  a  scarlet  letter  on 
her  breast. 

In  a  larger  town  than  ours  she  would  have  passed 
unnoticed.  She  did  not  look  like  a  bad  woman.  Of 
course  she  used  too  much  perfumed  white  powder,  and 
as  she  passed  you  caught  the  oversweet  breath  of  a 
certain  heavy  scent.  Then,  too,  her  diamond  eardrops 
would  have  made  any  woman's  features  look  hard; 
but  her  plump  face,  in  spite  of  its  heaviness,  wore  an 
expression  of  good-humoured  intelligence,  and  her 
eyeglasses  gave  her  somehow  a  look  of  respectability. 
We  do  not  associate  vice  with  eyeglasses.  So  in  a  large 
city  she  would  have  passed  for  a  well-dressed  pros- 
perous, comfortable  wife  and  mother,  who  was  in 
danger  of  losing  her  figure  from  an  overabundance 
of  good  living;  but  with  us  she  was  a  town  character, 
like  Old  Man  Givins,  the  drunkard,  or  the  weak- 
minded  Binns  girl.  When  she  passed  the  drug-store 
corner  there  would  be  a  sniggering  among  the  vacant- 
eyed  loafers  idling  there,  and  they  would  leer  at  each 
other  and  jest  in  undertones. 

So,  knowing  Blanche  Devine  as  we  did,  there  was 
something  resembling  a  riot  in  one  of  our  most  respec- 
table neighbourhoods  when  it  was  learned  that  she  had 
given  up  her  interest  in  the  house  near  the  freight 
depot  and  was  going  to  settle  down  in  the  white  cottage 


THE  WOMAN  WHO  TRIED  TO  BE  GOOD      183 

on  the  corner  and  be  good.  All  the  husbands  in  the 
block,  urged  on  by  righteously  indignant  wives,  dropped 
in  on  Alderman  Mooney  after  supper  to  see  if  the  thing 
could  not  be  stopped.  The  fourth  of  the  protesting 
husbands  to  arrive  was  the  Very  Young  Husband, 
who  lived  next  door  to  the  corner  cottage  that  Blanche 
Devine  had  bought.  The  Very  Young  Husband  had 
a  Very  Young  Wife,  and  they  were  the  joint  owners 
of  Snooky.  Snooky  was  three-going-on-four,  and 
looked  something  like  an  angel — only  healthier  and 
with  grimier  hands.  The  whole  neighbourhood  bor- 
rowed her  and  tried  to  spoil  her;  but  Snooky  would 
not  spoil. 

Alderman  Mooney  was  down  hi  the  cellar  fooling 
with  the  furnace.  He  was  in  his  furnace  overalls — a 
short  black  pipe  in  his  mouth.  Three  protesting  hus- 
bands had  just  left.  As  the  Very  Young  Husband, 
following  Mrs.  Mooney's  directions,  cautiously  de- 
scended the  cellar  stairs,  Alderman  Mooney  looked  up 
from  his  tinkering.  He  peered  through  a  haze  of  pipe- 
smoke. 

"Hello!"  he  called,  and  waved  the  haze  away  with 
his  open  palm.  "  Come  on  down !  Been  tinkering  with 
this  blamed  furnace  since  supper.  She  don't  draw  like 
she  ought.  'Long  toward  spring  a  furnace  always  gets 
balky.  How  many  tons  you  used  this  winter?" 

"Oh — ten,"  said  the  Very  Young  Husband  shortly. 
Alderman  Mooney  considered  it  thoughtfully.  The 
Young  Husband  leaned  up  against  the  side  of  the  cis- 


184  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

tern,  his  hands  in  his  pockets.  "Say,  Mooney,  is  that 
right  about  Blanche  Devine's  having  bought  the  house 
on  the  corner?'* 

"You're  the  fourth  man  that's  been  in  to  ask  me  that 
this  evening.  I'm  expecting  the  rest  of  the  block  before 
bedtime.  She's  bought  it  all  right." 

The  Young  Husband  flushed  and  kicked  at  a  piece  of 
coal  with  the  toe  of  his  boot. 

"Well,  it's  a  darned  shame!"  he  began  hotly.  "Jen 
was  ready  to  cry  at  supper.  This'll  be  a  fine  neighbour- 
hood for  Snooky  to  grow  up  in!  What's  a  woman  like 
that  want  to  come  into  a  respectable  street  for  any- 
way? I  own  my  home  and  pay  my  taxes " 

Alderman  Mooney  looked  up. 

"So  does  she,"  he  interrupted.  "She's  going  to 
improve  the  place — paint  it,  and  put  in  a  cellar  and 
a  furnace,  and  build  a  porch,  and  lay  a  cement  walk 
all  round." 

The  Young  Husband  took  his  hands  out  of  his  pockets 
in  order  to  emphasize  his  remarks  with  gestures. 

"What's  that  got  to  do  with  it?  I  don't  care  if  she 
puts  in  diamonds  for  windows  and  sets  out  Italian  gar- 
dens and  a  terrace  with  peacocks  on  it.  You're  the 
alderman  of  this  ward,  aren't  you?  Well,  it  was  up  to 
you  to  keep  her  out  of  this  block!  You  could  have 
fixed  it  with  an  injunction  or  something.  I'm  going  to 
get  up  a  petition — that's  what  I'm  going 

Alderman  Mooney  closed  the  furnace  door  with  a 
bang  that  drowned  the  rest  of  the  threat.  He  turned 


THE  WOMAN  WHO  TRIED  TO  BE  GOOD      185 

the  draft  in  a  pipe  overhead  and  brushed  his  sooty 
palms  briskly  together  like  one  who  would  put  an  end 
to  a  profitless  conversation. 

"She's  bought  the  house,"  he  said  mildly,  "and  paid 
for  it.  And  it's  hers.  She's  got  a  right  to  live  in  this 
neighbourhood  as  long  as  she  acts  respectable." 

The  Very  Young  Husband  laughed. 

"  She  won't  last !    They  never  do." 

Alderman  Mooney  had  taken  his  pipe  out  of  his 
mouth  and  was  rubbing  his  thumb  over  the  smooth 
bowl,  looking  down  at  it  with  unseeing  eyes.  On  his 
face  was  a  queer  look — the  look  of  one  who  is  embar- 
rassed because  he  is  about  to  say  something  honest. 

"Look  here!  I  want  to  tell  you  something:  I  hap- 
pened to  be  up  in  the  mayor's  office  the  day  Blanche 
signed  for  the  place.  She  had  to  go  through  a  lot  of 
red  tape  before  she  got  it — had  quite  a  time  of  it,  she 
did!  And  say,  kid,  that  woman  ain't  so — bad." 

The  Very  Young  Husband  exclaimed  impatiently: 

"Oh,  don't  give  me  any  of  that,  Mooney!  Blanche 
Devine's  a  town  character.  Even  the  kids  know  what 
she  is.  If  she's  got  religion  or  something,  and  wants  to 
quit  and  be  decent,  why  doesn't  she  go  to  another 
town — Chicago  or  some  place — where  nobody  knows 
her?" 

That  motion  of  Alderman  Mooney's  thumb  against 
the  smooth  pipebowl  stopped.  He  looked  up  slowly. 

"That's  what  I  said — the  mayor  too.  But  Blanche 
Deviae  said  she  wanted  to  try  it  here.  She  said  this 


i86  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

was  home  to  her.  Funny — ain't  it?  Said  she  wouldn't 
be  fooling  anybody  here.  They  know  her.  And  if 
she  moved  away,  she  said,  it'd  leak  out  some  way 
sooner  or  later.  It  does,  she  said.  Always!  Seems 
she  wants  to  live  like — well,  like  other  women.  She 
put  it  like  this:  She  says  she  hasn't  got  religion,  or 
any  of  that.  She  says  she's  no  different  than  she  was 
when  she  was  twenty.  She  says  that  for  the  last  ten 
years  the  ambition  of  her  life  has  been  to  be  able  to 
go  into  a  grocery  store  and  ask  the  price  of,  say,  celery; 
and,  if  the  clerk  charged  her  ten  when  it  ought  to  be 
seven,  to  be  able  to  sass  him  with  a  regular  piece  of 
her  mind — and  then  sail  out  and  trade  somewhere 
else  until  he  saw  that  she  didn't  have  to  stand  any- 
thing from  storekeepers,  any  more  than  any  other 
woman  that  did  her  own  marketing.  She's  a  smart 
woman,  Blanche  is!  She's  saved  her  money.  God 
knows  I  ain't  taking  her  part — exactly;  but  she  talked 
a  little,  and  the  mayor  and  me  got  a  little  of  her 
history." 

A  sneer  appeared  on  the  face  of  the  Very  Young 
Husband.  He  had  been  known  before  he  met  Jen  as 
a  rather  industrious  sower  of  that  seed  known  as  wild 
oats.  He  knew  a  thing  or  two,  did  the  Very  Young 
Husband,  in  spite  of  his  youth!  He  always  fussed 
when  Jen  wore  even  a  V-necked  summer  gown  on  the 
street. 

"Oh,  she  wasn't  playing  for  sympathy,"  went  on 
Alderman  Mooney  in  answer  to  the  sneer.  "She 


THE  WOMAN  WHO  TRIED  TO  BE  GOOD      187 

said  she'd  always  paid  her  way  and  always  expected 
to.  Seems  her  husband  left  her  without  a  cent  when 
she  was  eighteen — with  a  baby.  She  worked  for  four 
dollars  a  week  in  a  cheap  eating  house.  The  two  of 
'em  couldn't  live  on  that.  Then  the  baby " 

"Good  night!"  said  the  Very  Young  Husband.  "I 
suppose  Mrs.  Mooney's  going  to  call?" 

"  Minnie !  It  was  her  scolding  all  through  supper  that 
drove  me  down  to  monkey  with  the  furnace.  She's 
wild — Minnie  is."  He  peeled  off  his  overalls  and  hung 
them  on  a  nail.  The  Young  Husband  started  to  ascend 
the  cellar  stairs.  Alderman  Mooney  laid  a  detaining 
finger  on  his  sleeve.  "  Don't  say  anything  in  front  of 
Minnie!  She's  boiling!  Minnie  and  the  kids  are  going 
to  visit  her  folks  out  West  this  summer;  so  I  wouldn't 
so  much  as  dare  to  say  'Good  morning!'  to  the  Devine 
woman.  Anyway  a  person  wouldn't  talk  to  her,  I 
suppose.  But  I  kind  of  thought  I'd  tell  you  about 
her." 

"Thanks!"  said  the  Very  Young  Husband  dryly. 

In  the  early  spring,  before  Blanche  Devine  moved  in, 
there  came  stonemasons,  who  began  to  build  something. 
It  was  a  great  stone  fireplace  that  rose  in  massive 
incongruity  at  the  side  of  the  little  white  cottage. 
Blanche  Devine  was  trying  to  make  a  home  for  herself. 
We  no  longer  build  fireplaces  for  physical  warmth — 
we  build  them  for  the  warmth  of  the  soul;  we  build 
them  to  dream  by,  to  hope  by,  to  home  by. 

Blanche  Devine  used  to  come  and  watch  them  now 


i88  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

and  then  as  the  work  progressed.  She  had  a  way  of 
walking  round  and  round  the  house,  looking  up  at  it 
pridefully  and  poking  at  plaster  and  paint  with  her 
umbrella  or  fingertip.  One  day  she  brought  with  her 
a  man  with  a  spade.  He  spaded  up  a  neat  square  of 
ground  at  the  side  of  the  ^cottage  and  a  long  ridge 
near  the  fence  that  separated  her  yard  from  that  of 
the  very  young  couple  next  door.  The  ridge  spelled 
sweet  peas  and  nasturtiums  to  our  small-town  eyes. 

On  the  day  that  Blanche  Devine  moved  in  there  was 
wild  agitation  among  the  white-ruffled  bedroom  cur- 
tains of  the  neighbourhood.  Later  on  certain  odours, 
as  of  burning  dinners,  pervaded  the  atmosphere. 
Blanche  Devine,  flushed  and  excited,  her  hair  slightly 
askew,  her  diamond  eardrops  flashing,  directed  the 
the  moving,  wrapped  in  her  great  fur  coat;  but  on  the 
third  morning  we  gasped  when  she  appeared  out-of- 
doors,  carrying  a  little  household  ladder,  a  pail  of 
steaming  water  and  sundry  voluminous  white  cloths. 
She  reared  the  little  ladder  against  the  side  of  the  house, 
mounted  it  cautiously,  and  began  to  wash  windows 
with  housewifely  thoroughness.  Her  stout  figure 
was  swathed  in  a  grey  sweater  and  on  her  head  was  a 
battered  felt  hat — the  sort  of  window- washing  costume 
that  has  been  worn  by  women  from  tune  immemorial. 
We  noticed  that  she  used  plenty  of  hot  water  and  clean 
rags,  and  that  she  rubbed  the  glass  until  it  sparkled, 
leaning  perilously  sideways  on  the  ladder  to  detect 
elusive  streaks.  Our  keenest  housekeeping  eye 


THE  WOMAN  WHO  TRIED  TO  BE  GOOD      189 

find  no  fault  with  the  way  Blanche  Devine  washed 
windows. 

By  May,  Blanche  Devine  had  left  off  her  diamond 
eardrops — perhaps  it  was  their  absence  that  gave  her 
face  a  new  expression.  When  she  went  down  town  we 
noticed  that  her  hats  were  more  like  the  hats  the  other 
women  in  our  town  wore;  but  she  still  affected  extrava- 
gant footgear,  as  is  right  and  proper  for  a  stout  woman 
who  has  cause  to  be  vain  of  her  feet.  We  noticed  that 
her  trips  down  town  were  rare  that  spring  and  summer. 
She  used  to  come  home  laden  with  little  bundles; 
and  before  supper  she  would  change  her  street  clothes 
for  a  neat,  washable  housedress,  as  is  our  thrifty 
custom.  Through  her  bright  windows  we  could  see 
her  moving  briskly  about  from  kitchen  to  sitting  room; 
and  from  the  smells  that  floated  out  from  her  kitchen 
door,  she  seemed  to  be  preparing  for  her  solitary  supper 
the  same  homely  viands  that  were  frying  or  stewing  or 
baking  in  our  kitchens.  Sometimes  you  could  detect 
the  delectable  scent  of  browning  hot  tea  biscuit.  It 
takes  a  brave,  courageous,  determined  woman  to  make 
tea  buscuit  for  no  one  but  herself. 

Blanche  Devine  joined  the  church.  On  the  first 
Sunday  morning  she  came  to  the  service  there  was  a 
little  flurry  among  the  ushers  at  the  vestibule  door. 
They  seated  her  well  in  the  rear.  The  second  Sunday 
morning  a  dreadful  thing  happened.  The  woman  next 
to  whom  they  seated  her  turned,  regarded  her  stonily 
for  a  moment,  then  rose  agitatedly  and  moved  to  a  pew 


igo  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

across  the  aisle.  Blanche  Devine's  face  went  a  dull 
red  beneath  her  white  powder.  She  never  came  again — 
though  we  saw  the  minister  visit  her  once  or  twice. 
She  always  accompanied  him  to  the  door  pleasantly, 
holding  it  well  open  until  he  was  down  the  little  flight 
of  steps  and  on  the  sidewalk.  The  minister's  wife  did 
not  call — but,  then,  there  are  limits  to  the  duties  of  a 
minister's  wife. 

She  rose  early,  like  the  rest  of  us;  and  as  summer 
came  on  we  used  to  see  her  moving  about  in  her  little 
garden  patch  hi  the  dewy,  golden  morning.  She  wore 
absurd  pale-blue  kimonos  that  made  her  stout  figure 
loom  immense  against  the  greenery  of  garden  and 
apple  tree.  The  neighbourhood  women  viewed  these 
negligees  with  Puritan  disapproval  as  they  smoothed 
down  their  own  prim,  starched  gingham  skirts.  They 
said  it  was  disgusting — and  perhaps  it  was;  but  the 
habit  of  years  is  not  easily  overcome.  Blanche  Devine 
— snipping  her  sweet  peas;  peering  anxiously  at  the 
Virginia  creeper  that  clung  with  such  fragile  fingers  to 
the  trellis;  watering  the  flower  baskets  that  hung  from 
her  porch — was  blissfully  unconscious  of  the  dis- 
approving eyes.  I  wish  one  of  us  had  just  stopped  to 
call  good  morning  to  her  over  the  fence,  and  to  say  in 
our  neighbourly,  small  town  way:  "My,  ain't  this  a 
scorcher!  So  early  too!  It'll  be  fierce  by  noon!"  But 
we  did  not. 

I  think  perhaps  the  evenings  must  have  been  the 
loneliest  for  her.  The  summer  evenings  in  our  little 


THE  WOMAN  WHO  TRIED  TO  BE  GOOD      191 

town  are  filled  with  intimate,  human,  neighbourly 
sounds.  After  the  heat  of  the  day  it  is  infinitely 
pleasant  to  relax  in  the  cool  comfort  of  the  front  porch, 
with  the  life  of  the  town  eddying  about  us.  We  sew 
and  read  out  there  until  it  grows  dusk.  We  call  across- 
lots  to  our  next-door  neighbour.  The  men  water  the 
lawns  and  the  flower  boxes  and  get  together  in  little 
quiet  groups  to  discuss  the  new  street  paving.  I  have 
even  known  Mrs.  Hines  to  bring  her  cherries  out  there 
when  she  had  canning  to  do,  and  pit  them  there  on  the 
front  porch  partially  shielded  by  her  porch  vine,  but 
not  so  effectually  that  she  was  deprived  of  the  sights  and 
sounds  about  her.  The  kettle  in  her  lap  and  the  dish- 
pan  full  of  great  ripe  cherries  on  the  porch  floor  by  her 
chair,  she  would  pit  and  chat  and  peer  out  through 
the  vines,  the  red  juice  staining  her  plump  bare  arms. 

I  have  wondered  since  what  Blanche  Devine  thought 
of  us  those  lonesome  evenings — those  evenings 
filled  with  little  friendly  sights  and  sounds.  It  is 
lonely,  uphill  business  at  best — this  being  good. 
It  must  have  been  difficult  for  her,  who  had  dwelt 
behind  closed  shutters  so  long,  to  seat  herself  on  the 
new  front  porch  for  all  the  world  to  stare  at;  but  she 
did  sit  there — resolutely — watching  us  in  silence. 

She  seized  hungrily  upon  the  stray  crumbs  of  con- 
versation that  fell  to  her.  The  milkman  and  the  ice- 
man and  the  butcher  boy  used  to  hold  daily  conversation 
with  her.  They — sociable  gentlemen — would  stand 
on  her  doorstep,  one  grimy  hand  resting  against  the 


192  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

white  of  her  doorpost,  exchanging  the  time  of  day  with 
Blanche  in  the  doorway — a  tea  towel  in  one  hand,  per- 
haps, and  a  plate  in  the  other.  Her  little  house  was  a 
miracle  of  cleanliness.  It  was  no  uncommon  sight  to 
see  her  down  on  her  knees  on  the  kitchen  floor,  wielding 
her  brush  and  rag  like  the  rest  of  us.  In  canning  and 
preserving  time  there  floated  out  from  her  kitchen  the 
pungent  scent  of  pickled  crab  apples;  the  mouth- 
watering, nostril-pricking  smell  that  meant  sweet 
pickles;  or  the  cloying,  tantalising,  divinely  sticky 
odour  that  meant  raspberry  jam.  Snooky,  from  her  side 
of  the  fence,  often  used  to  peer  through  the  pickets, 
gazing  in  the  direction  of  the  enticing  smells  next  door. 
Early  one  September  morning  there  floated  out 
from  Blanche  Devine's  kitchen  that  clean,  fragrant, 
sweet  scent  of  fresh-baked  cookies — cookies  with  butter 
in  them,  and  spice,  and  with  nuts  on  top.  Just  by  the 
smell  of  them  your  mind's  eye  pictured  them  coming  from 
the  oven — crisp  brown  circlets,  crumbly,  toothsome, 
delectable.  Snooky,  in  her  scarlet  sweater  and  cap, 
sniffed  them  from  afar  and  straightway  deserted  her 
sandpile  to  take  her  stand  at  the  fence.  She  peered 
through  the  restraining  bars,  standing  on  tiptoe. 
Blanche  Devine,  glancing  up  from  her  board  and  rolling- 
pin,  saw  the  eager  golden  head.  And  Snooky,  with 
guile  in  her  heart,  raised  one  fat,  dimpled  hand  above 
the  fence  and  waved  it  friendlily.  Blanche  Devine 
waved  back.  Thus  encouraged,  Snooky 's  two  hands 
wigwagged  frantically  above  the  pickets.  Blanche 


THE  WOMAN  WHO  TRIED  TO  BE  GOOD      193 

Devine  hesitated  a  moment,  her  floury  hand  on  her 
hip.  Then  she  went  to  the  pantry  shelf  and  took  out 
a  clean  white  saucer.  She  selected  from  the  brown 
jar  on  the  table  three  of  the  brownest,  crumbliest, 
most  perfect  cookies,  with  a  walnut  meat  perched  atop 
of  each,  placed  them  temptingly  on  the  saucer  and, 
descending  the  steps,  came  swiftly  across  the  grass  to 
the  triumphant  Snooky.  Blanche  Devine  held  out  the 
saucer,  her  lips  smiling,  her  eyes  tender.  Snooky 
reached  up  with  one  plump  white  arm. 

" Snooky!"  shrilled  a  high  voice.  "Snooky!"  A 
voice  of  horror  and  of  wrath.  "Come  here  to  me  this 
minute!  And  don't  you  dare  to  touch  those!"  Snooky 
hesitated  rebelliously,  one  pink  finger  in  her  pouting 
mouth.  "Snooky!  Do  you  hear  me?" 

And  the  Very  Young  Wife  began  to  descend  the 
steps  of  her  back  porch.  Snooky,  regretful  eyes  on 
the  toothsome  dainties,  turned  away  aggrieved.  The 
Very  Young  Wife,  her  lips  set,  her  eyes  flashing,  ad- 
vanced and  seized  the  shrieking  Snooky  by  one  writhing 
arm  and  dragged  her  away  toward  home  and  safety. 

Blanche  Devine  stood  there  at  the  fence,  holding  the 
saucer  in  her  hand.  The  saucer  tipped  slowly,  and  the 
three  cookies  slipped  off  and  fell  to  the  grass.  Blanche 
Devine  followed  them  with  her  eyes  and  stood  staring 
at  them  a  moment.  Then  she  turned  quickly,  went 
into  the  house  and  shut  the  door. 

It  was  about  this  tune  we  noticed  that  Blanche  De- 
vine  was  away  much  of  the  time.  The  little  white 


194  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

cottage  would  be  empty  for  a  week.  We  knew  she 
was  out  of  town  because  the  expressman  would  come 
for  her  trunk.  We  used  to  lift  our  eyebrows  signifi- 
cantly. The  newspapers  and  handbills  would  accu- 
mulate in  a  dusty  little  heap  on  the  porch;  but  when 
she  returned  there  was  always  a  grand  cleaning,  with 
the  windows  open,  and  Blanche — her  head  bound 
turbanwise  in  a  towel — appearing  at  a  window  every 
few  minutes  to  shake  out  a  dustcloth.  She  seemed  to 
put  an  enormous  amount  of  energy  into  those  cleanings 
• — as  if  they  were  a  sort  of  safety  valve. 

As  winter  came  on  she  used  to  sit  up  before  her 
grate  fire  long,  long  after  we  were  asleep  in  our  beds. 
When  she  neglected  to  pull  down  the  shades  we  could 
see  the  flames  of  her  cosy  fire  dancing  gnomelike  on 
the  wall. 

There  came  a  night  of  sleet  and  snow,  and  wind  and 
rattling  hail — one  of  those  blustering,  wild  nights  that 
are  followed  by  morning-paper  reports  of  trains  stalled 
in  drifts,  mail  delayed,  telephone  and  telegraph  wires 
down.  It  must  have  been  midnight  or  past  when  there 
came  a  hammering  at  Blanche  Devine's  door — a 
persistent,  clamorous  rapping.  Blanche  Devine,  sitting 
before  her  dying  fire  half  asleep,  started  and  cringed 
when  she  heard  it;  then  jumped  to  her  feet,  her  hand 
at  her  breast — her  eyes  darting  this  way  and  that,  as 
though  seeking  escape. 

She  had  heard  a  rapping  like  that  before.  It  had 
meant  bluecoats  swarming  up  the  stairway,  and 


THE  WOMAN  WHO  TRIED  TO  BE  GOOD      195 

frightened  cries  and  pleadings,  and  wild  confusion. 
So  she  started  forward  now,  quivering.  And  then  she 
remembered,  being  wholly  awake  now — she  remem- 
bered, and  threw  up  her  head  and  smiled  a  little  bitterly 
and  walked  toward  the  door.  The  hammering  con- 
tinued, louder  than  ever.  Blanche  Devine  flicked 
on  the  porch  light  and  opened  the  door.  The  half-clad 
figure  of  the  Very  Young  Wife  next  door  staggered  into 
the  room.  She  seized  Blanche  Devine's  arm  with 
both  her  frenzied  hands  and  shook  her,  the  wind  and 
snow  beating  in  upon  both  of  them. 

"The  baby!"  she  screamed  in  a  high,  hysterical  voice. 
"The  baby!    The  baby- 
Blanche  Devine  shut  the  door  and  shook  the  Young 
Wife  smartly  by  the  shoulders. 

"Stop  screaming,"  she  said  quietly.    "Is  she  sick?" 
The  Young  Wife  told  her,  her  teeth  chattering: 
"Come  quick!     She's  dying!    WilPs  out  of  town. 
I  tried  to  get  the  doctor.    The  telephone  wouldn't — 

I  saw  your  light!    For  God's  sake " 

Blanche  Devine  grasped  the  Young  Wife's  arm, 
opened  the  door,  and  together  they  sped  across  the 
little  space  that  separated  the  two  houses.  Blanche 
Devine  was  a  big  woman,  but  she  took  the  stairs  like 
a  girl  and  found  the  right  bedroom  by  some  miraculous 
woman  instinct.  A  dreadful  chojdng,  rattling  sound 
was  coming  from  Snooky's  bed. 

"Croup,"  said  Blanche  Devine,  and  began  her  fight. 
It  was  a  good  fight.    She  marshalled  her  little  inade- 


i96  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

quate  forces,  made  up  of  the  half-fainting  Young  Wife 
and  the  terrified  and  awkward  hired  girl. 

" Get  the  hot  water  on — lots  of  it!"  Blanche  Devine 
pinned  up  her  sleeves.  "Hot  cloths!  Tear  up  a  sheet 
—or  anything!  Got  an  oilstove?  I  want  a  teakettle 
boiling  in  the  room.  She's  got  to  have  the  steam.  If 
that  don't  do  it  we'll  raise  an  umbrella  over  her  and 
throw  a  sheet  over,  and  hold  the  kettle  under  till  the 
steam  gets  to  her  that  way.  Got  any  ipecac?" 

The  Young  Wife  obeyed  orders,  whitefaced  and  shak- 
ing. Once  Blanche  Devine  glanced  up  at  her  sharply. 

" Don't  you  dare  faint!"  she  commanded. 

And  the  fight  went  on.  Gradually  the  breathing 
that  had  been  so  frightful  became  softer,  easier. 
Blanche  Devine  did  not  relax.  It  was  not  until  the  little 
figure  breathed  gently  in  sleep  that  Blanche  Devine 
sat  back  satisfied.  Then  she  tucked  a  cover  ever  so 
gently  at  the  side  of  the  bed,  took  a  last  satisfied 
look  at  the  face  on  the  pillow,  and  turned  to  look  at  the 
wan,  dishevelled  Young  Wife. 

"  She's  all  right  now.  We  can  get  the  doctor  when 
morning  comes — though  I  don't  know's  you'll  need 
him." 

The  Young  Wife  came  round  to  Blanche  Devine's 
side  of  the  bed  and  stood  looking  up  at  her. 

"My  baby  died,"  said  Blanche  Devine  simply. 
The  Young  Wife  gave  a  little  inarticulate  cry,  put 
her  two  hands  on  Blanche  Devine's  broad  shoulders 
and  laid  her  tired  head  on  her  breast. 


THE  WOMAN  WHO  TRIED  TO  BE  GOOD      197 

"I  guess  I'd  better  be  going/'  said  Blanche  Devine. 

The  Young  Wife  raised  her  head.  Her  eyes  were 
round  with  fright. 

"Going!  Oh,  please  stay!  I'm  so  afraid.  Suppose 
she  should  take  sick  again!  That  awful — awful  breath- 
ing- 

"I'll  stay  if  you  want  me  to." 

"Oh,  please!  I'll  make  up  your  bed  and  you  can 
rest " 

"I'm  not  sleepy.  I'm  not  much  of  a  hand  to  sleep 
anyway.  I'll  sit  up  here  in  the  hall,  where  there's  a 
light.  You  get  to  bed.  I'll  watch  and  see  that  every- 
thing's all  right.  Have  you  got  something  I  can  read 
out  here — something  kind  of  lively — with  a  love 
story  in  it?" 

So  the  night  went  by.  Snooky  slept  in  her  little 
white  bed.  The  Very  Young  Wife  half  dozed  in  her 
bed,  so  near  the  little  one.  In  the  hall,  her  stout  figure 
looming  grotesque  in  wall-shadows,  sat  Blanche  De- 
vine  pretending  to  read.  Now  and  then  she  rose  and 
tiptoed  into  the  bedroom  with  miraculous  quiet,  and 
stooped  over  the  little  bed  and  listened  and  looked — 
and  tiptoed  away  again,  satisfied. 

The  Young  Husband  came  home  from  his  business 
trip  next  day  with  tales  of  snowdrifts  and  stalled 
engines.  Blanche  Devine  breathed  a  sigh  of  relief 
when  she  saw  him  from  her  kitchen  window.  She 
watched  the  house  now  with  a  sort  of  proprietary  eye. 
She  wondered  about  Snooky;  but  she  knew  better 


198  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

than  to  ask.  So  she  waited.  The  Young  Wife  next 
door  had  told  her  husband  all  about  that  awful  night 
—had  told  him  with  tears  and  sobs.  The  Very  Young 
Husband  had  been  very,  very  angry  with  her — angry 
and  hurt,  he  said,  and  astonished!  Snooky  could  not 
have  been  so  sick!  Look  at  her  now!  As  well  as  ever. 
And  to  have  called  such  a  woman!  Well,  really  he 
did  not  want  to  be  harsh;  but  she  must  understand  that 
she  must  never  speak  to  the  woman  again.  Never! 

So  the  next  day  the  Very  Young  Wife  happened  to 
go  by  with  the  Young  Husband.  Blanche  Devine 
spied  them  from  her  sitting-room  window,  and  she 
made  the  excuse  of  looking  in  her  mailbox  in  order  to 
go  to  the  door.  She  stood  in  the  doorway  and  the 
Very  Young  Wife  went  by  on  the  arm  of  her  husband. 
She  went  by — rather  white-faced — without  a  look  or  a 
word  or  a  sign! 

And  then  this  happened!  There  came  into  Blanche 
Devine's  face  a  look  that  made  slits  of  her  eyes,  and 
drew  her  mouth  down  into  an  ugly,  narrow  line,  and 
that  made  the  muscles  of  her  jaw  tense  and  hard. 
It  was  the  ugliest  look  you  can  imagine.  Then  she 
smiled — if  having  one's  lips  curl  away  from  one's  teeth 
can  be  called  smiling. 

Two  days  later  there  was  great  news  of  the  white 
cottage  on  the  corner.  The  curtains  were  down;  the 
furniture  was  packed;  the  rugs  were  rolled.  The 
wagons  came  and  backed  up  to  the  house  and  took 
those  things  that  had  made  a  home  for  Blanche  Devine. 


THE  WOMAN  WHO  TRIED  TO  BE  GOOD      199 

And  when  we  heard  that  she  had  bought  back  her 
interest  in  the  House  With  the  Closed  Shutters,  near 
the  freight  depot,  we  sniffed. 

"I  knew  she  wouldn't  last!"  we  said. 

^They  never  do!"  said  we. 


VII 

THE  GIRL  WHO  WENT  RIGHT 

rpHERE  is  a  story— Kipling,  I  think— that  tells 
of  a  spirited  horse  galloping  in  the  dark  suddenly 
drawing  up  tense,  hoofs  bunched,  slim  flanks  quivering, 
nostrils  dilated,  ears  pricked.  Urging  being  of  no 
avail  the  rider  dismounts,  strikes  a  match,  advances 
a  cautious  step  or  so,  and  finds  himself  at  the  precipitous 
brink  of  a  newly  formed  crevasse. 

So  it  is  with  your  trained  editor.  A  miraculous 
sixth  sense  guides  him.  A  mysterious  something  warns 
him  of  danger  lurking  within  the  seemingly  innocent 
oblong  white  envelope.  Without  slitting  the  flap, 
without  pausing  to  adjust  his  tortoise-rimmed  glasses, 
without  clearing  his  throat,  without  lighting  his  cigar- 
ette— he  knows. 

The  deadly  newspaper  story  he  scents  in  the  dark. 
Cub  reporter.  Crusty  city  editor.  Cub  fired.  Stumbles 
on  to  a  big  story.  Staggers  into  newspaper  office 
wild-eyed.  Last  edition.  "Hold  the  presses!"  Crusty 
C.  E.  stands  over  cub's  typewriter  grabbing  story 
line  by  line.  Even  foreman  of  pressroom  moved  to 
tears  by  tale.  "Boys,  this  ain't  just  a  story  this  kid's 
writin'.  This  is  history!"  Story  finished.  Cub  faints. 
C.  E.  makes  him  star  reporter. 


THE  GIRL  WHO  WENT  RIGHT  201 

The  athletic  story:  "I  could  never  marry  a  molly- 
coddle like  you,  Harold  Hammond!"  Big  game  of 
the  year.  Team  crippled.  Second  half.  Halfback 
hurt.  Harold  Hammond,  scrub,  into  the  game.  Touch- 
down! Broken  leg.  Five  to  nothing.  "  Harold,  can  you 
ever,  ever  forgive  me?" 

The  pseudo-psychological  story:  She  had  been  sit- 
ting before  the  fire  for  a  long,  long  time.  The  flame 
had  flickered  and  died  down  to  a  smouldering  ash. 
The  sound  of  his  departing  footsteps  echoed  and 
re-echoed  through  her  brain.  But  the  little  room 
was  very,  very  still. 

The  shop-girl  story:  Torn  boots  and  temptation, 
tears  and  snears,  pathos  and  bathos,  all  the  way  from 
Zola  to  the  vice  inquiry. 

Having  thus  attempted  to  hide  the  deadly  com- 
monplaceness  of  this  story  with  a  thin  layer  of  cyni- 
cism, perhaps  even  the  wily  editor  may  be  tricked 
into  taking  the  leap. 

Four  weeks  before  the  completion  of  the  new  twelve- 
story  addition  the  store  advertised  for  two  hundred 
experienced  saleswomen.  Rachel  Wiletzky,  entering 
the  superintendent's  office  after  a  wait  of  three  hours, 
was  Applicant  No.  179.  The  superintendent  did  not 
look  up  as  Rachel  came  in.  He  scribbled  busily  on 
a  pad  of  paper  at  his  desk,  thus  observing  rules  one 
and  two  in  the  proper  conduct  of  superintendents 
when  interviewing  applicants.  Rachel  Wiletzky,  stand- 


202  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

ing  by  his  desk,  did  not  cough  or  wriggle  or  rustle  her 
skirts  or  sag  on  one  hip.  A  sense  of  her  quiet  pene- 
trated the  superintendent's  subconsciousness.  He 
glanced  up  hurriedly  over  his  left  shoulder.  Then  he 
laid  down  his  pencil  and  sat  up  slowly.  His  mind  was 
working  quickly  enough  though.  In  the  twelve  seconds 
that  intervened  between  the  laying  down  of  the  pencil 
and  the  sitting  up  hi  his  chair  he  had  hastily  readjusted 
all  his  well-founded  preconceived  ideas  on  the  appear- 
ance of  shop-girl  applicants. 

Rachel  Wiletzky  had  the  colouring  and  physique 
of  a  dairymaid.  It  was  the  sort  of  colouring  that  you 
associate  in  your  mind  with  lush  green  fields,  and 
Jersey  cows,  and  village  maids,  in  Watteau  frocks, 
balancing  brimming  pails  aloft  in  the  protecting 
curve  of  one  rounded  upraised  arm,  with  perhaps  a 
Maypole  dance  or  so  in  the  background.  Altogether, 
had  the  superintendent  been  given  to  figures  of  speech, 
he  might  have  said  that  Rachel  was  as  much  out  of 
place  among  the  preceding  one  hundred  and  seventy- 
eight  bloodless,  hollow-chested,  stoop-shouldered  appli- 
cants as  a  sunflower  would  be  in  a  patch  of  dank  white 
fungi. 

He  himself  was  one  of  those  bleached  men  that  you 
find  on  the  office  floor  of  department  stores.  Grey 
skin,  grey  eyes,  greying  hair,  careful  grey  clothes— 
seemingly  as  void  of  pigment  as  one  of  those  sunless 
things  you  disclose  when  you  turn  over  a  board  that 
has  long  lain  on  the  mouldy  floor  of  a  damp  cellar.  It 


THE  GIRL  WHO  WENT  RIGHT  203 

was  only  when  you  looked  closely  that  you  noticed  a 
fleck  of  golden  brown  in  the  cold  grey  of  each  eye, 
and  a  streak  of  warm  brown  forming  an  unquenchable 
forelock  that  the  conquering  grey  had  not  been  able 
to  vanquish.  It  may  have  been  a  something  within 
him  corresponding  to  those  outward  bits  of  human 
colouring  that  tempted  him  to  yield  to  a  queer  im- 
pulse. He  whipped  from  his  breast-pocket  the  grey- 
bordered  handkerchief,  reached  up  swiftly  and  passed 
one  white  corner  of  it  down  the  length  of  Rachel 
Wiletzky's  Killarney-rose  left  cheek.  The  rude  path 
down  which  the  handkerchief  had  travelled  deepened 
to  red  for  a  moment  before  both  rose-pink  cheeks 
bloomed  into  scarlet.  The  superintendent  gazed 
rather  ruefully  from  unblemished  handkerchief  to 
cheek  and  back  again. 

"Why— it— it's  real!"  he  stammered. 

Rachel  Wiletzky  smiled  a  good-natured  little  smile 
that  had  in  it  a  dash  of  superiority. 

"If  I  was  putting  it  on,"  she  said,  "I  hope  I'd  have 
sense  enough  to  leave  something  to  the  imagination. 
This  colour  out  of  a  box  would  take  a  spiderweb  veil 
to  tone  it  down." 

Not  much  more  than  a  score  of  words.  And  yet 
before  the  half  were  spoken  you  were  certain  that 
Rachel  Wiletzky's  knowledge  of  lush  green  fields  and 
bucolic  scenes  was  that  gleaned  from  the  condensed- 
milk  ads  that  glare  down  at  one  from  billboards  and 
street-car  chromos.  Hers  was  the  ghetto  voice — 


204  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

harsh,  metallic,  yet  fraught  with  the  resonant  music 
of  tragedy. 

"H'm — name?"  asked  the  grey  superintendent. 
He  knew  that  vocal  quality. 

A  queer  look  stole  into  Rachel  Wiletzky's  face, 
a  look  of  cunning  and  determination  and  shrewdness. 

"Ray  Willets,"  she  replied  composedly.  "Double  1." 

"Clerked  before,  of  course.  Our  advertisement 
stated " 

"Oh  yes,"  interrupted  Ray  Willets  hastily,  eagerly. 
"I  can  sell  goods.  My  customers  like  me.  And  I 
don't  get  tired.  I  don't  know  why,  but  I  don't." 

The  superintendent  glanced  up  again  at  the  red 
that  glowed  higher  with  the  girl's  suppressed  excite- 
ment. He  took  a  printed  slip  from  the  little  pile  of 
paper  that  lay  on  his  desk. 

"Well,  anyway,  you're  the  first  clerk  I  ever  saw 
who  had  so  much  red  blood  that  she  could  afford  to 
use  it  for  decorative  purposes.  Step  into  the  next 
room,  answer  the  questions  on  this  card  and  turn 
it  in.  You'll  be  notified." 

Ray  Willets  took  the  searching,  telltale  blank  that 
put  its  questions  so  pertinently.  "Where  last  em- 
ployed?" it  demanded.  "Why  did  you  leave?  Do 
you  live  at  home?" 

Ray  Willets  moved  slowly  away  toward  the  door 
opposite.  The  superintendent  reached  forward  to 
press  the  button  that  would  summon  Applicant  No. 
1 80.  But  before  his  finger  touched  it  Ray  Willets  turneof 


THE  GIRL  WHO  WENT  RIGHT  205 

and  came  back  swiftly.  She  held  the  card  out  before 
his  suprised  eyes. 

"I  can't  fill  this  out.  If  I  do  I  won't  get  the  job. 
I  work  over  at  the  Halsted  Street  Bazaar.  You  know — 
the  Cheap  Store.  I  lied  and  sent  word  I  was  sick  so 
I  could  come  over  here  this  morning.  And  they  dock 
you  for  time  off  whether  you're  sick  or  not." 

The  superintendent  drummed  impatiently  with  his 
ringers.  "I  can't  listen  to  all  this.  Haven't  time. 
Fill  out  your  blank,  and  if— 

All  that  latent  dramatic  force  which  is  a  heritage 
of  her  race  came  to  the  girl's  aid  now. 

"The  blank!  How  can  I  say  on  a  blank  that  I'm 
leaving  because  I  want  to  be  where  real  people  are? 
What  chance  has  a  girl  got  over  there  on  the  West 
Side?  I'm  different.  I  don't  Jknow  why,  but  I  am. 
Look  at  my  face!  Where  should  I  get  red  cheeks 
from?  From  not  having  enough  to  eat  half  the  time 
and  sleeping  three  in  a  bed?" 

She  snatched  off  her  shabby  glove  and  held  one 
hand  out  before  the  man's  face. 

"From  where  do  I  get  such  hands?  Not  from 
selling  hardware  over  at  Twelfth  and  Halsted.  Look 
at  it!  Say,  couldn't  that  hand  sell  silk  and  lace?" 

Some  one  has  said  that  to  make  fingers  and  wrists 
like  those  which  Ray  Willets  held  out  for  inspection 
it  is  necessary  to  have  had  at  least  five  generations 
of  ancestors  who  have  sat  with  their  hands  folded 
in  their  laps.  Slender,  tapering,  sensitive  hands  they 


206  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

were,  pink-tipped,  temperamental.  Wistful  hands 
they  were,  speaking  hands,  an  inheritance,  perhaps, 
from  some  dreamer  ancestor  within  the  old-world 
ghetto,  some  long-paired,  velvet-eyed  student  of  the 
Talmud  dwelling  within  the  pale  with  its  squalor  and 
noise,  and  dreaming  of  unseen  things  beyond  the 
confining  gates — things  rare  and  exquisite  and  fine. 

" Ashamed  of  your  folks?"  snapped  the  superin- 
tendent. 

"N-no — No!  But  I  want  to  be  different.  I  am 
different!  Give  me  a  chance,  will  you?  I'm  straight. 
And  I'll  work.  And  I  can  sell  goods.  Try  me." 

That  all-pervading  greyness  seemed  to  have  lifted 
from  the  man  at  the  desk.  The  brown  flecks  in  the 
eyes  seemed  to  spread  and  engulf  the  surrounding 
colourlessness.  His  face,  too,  took  on  a  glow  that  seemed 
to  come  from  within.  It  was  like  the  lifting  of  a  thick 
grey  mist  on  a  foggy  morning,  so  that  the  sun  shines 
bright  and  clear  for  a  brief  moment  before  the  damp 
curtain  rolls  down  again  and  effaces  it. 

He  leaned  forward  in  his  chair,  a  queer  half-smile 
on  his  face. 

"I'll  give  you  your  chance,"  he  said,  "for  one 
month.  At  the  end  of  that  tune  I'll  send  for  you. 
I'm  not  going  to  watch  you.  I'm  not  going  to  have 
you  watched.  Of  course  your  sale  slips  will  show  the 
office  whether  you're  selling  goods  or  not.  If  you're 
not  they'll  discharge  you.  But  that's  routine.  What 
do  you  want  to  sell?" 


THE  GIRL  WHO  WENT  RIGHT  207 

"What  do  I  want  to Do  you  mean Why,  I 

want  to  sell  the  lacy  things." 
"The  lacy- 
Ray,  very  red-cheeked,  made  the  plunge.    "The — 
the  lawnjeree,  you  know.   The  things  with  ribbon  and 
handwork  and  yards  and  yards  of  real  lace.    I've  seen 
'em  in  the  glass  case  in  the  French  Room.    Seventy- 
nine  dollars  marked  down  from  one  hundred." 

The  superintendent  scribbled  on  a  card.  "Show 
this  Monday  morning.  Miss  Jevne  is  the  head  of  your 
department.  You'll  spend  two  hours  a  day  in  the 
store  school  of  instruction  for  clerks.  Here,  you're 
forgetting  your  glove." 

The  grey  look  had  settled  down  on  him  again  as 
he  reached  out  to  press  the  desk  button.  Ray  Willets 
passed  out  at  the  door  opposite  the  one  through 
which  Rachel  Wiletzky  had  entered. 

Some  one  in  the  department  nick-named  her  Chubbs 
before  she  had  spent  half  a  day  in  the  underwear  and 
imported  lingerie.  At  the  store  school  she  listened  and 
learned.  She  learned  how  important  were  things  of 
which  Halsted  Street  took  no  cognisance.  She  learned 
to  make  out  a  sale  slip  as  complicated  as  an  engineering 
blueprint.  She  learned  that  a  clerk  must  develop 
suavity  and  patience  in  the  same  degree  as  a  customer 
waxes  waspish  and  insulting,  and  that  the  spectrum's 
colours  do  not  exist  in  the  costume  of  the  girl-behind- 
the-counter.  For  her  there  are  only  black  and  white. 
These  things  she  learned  and  many  more,  and  remem- 


208  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

bered  them,  for  behind  the  rosy  cheeks  and  the  terrier- 
bright  eyes  burned  the  indomitable  desire  to  get  on. 
And  the  finished  embodiment  of  all  of  Ray  Willets' 
desires  and  ambitions  was  daily  before  her  eyes  in 
the  presence  of  Miss  Jevne,  head  of  the  lingerie  and 
negligees. 

Of  Miss  Jevne  it  might  be  said  that  she  was  real 
where  Ray  was  artificial,  and  artificial  where  Ray 
was  real.  Everything  that  Miss  Jevne  wore  was  real. 
She  was  as  modish  as  Ray  was  shabby,  as  slim  as  Ray 
was  stocky,  as  artificially  tinted  and  tinctured  as 
Ray  was  naturally  rosy-cheeked  and  buxom.  It  takes 
real  money  to  buy  clothes  as  real  as  those  worn  by 
Miss  Jevne.  The  soft  charmeuse  hi  her  graceful  gown 
was  real  and  miraculously  draped.  The  cobweb-lace 
collar  that  so  delicately  traced  its  pattern  against  the 
black  background  of  her  gown  was  real.  So  was  the 
ripple  of  lace  that  cascaded  down  the  front  of  her 
blouse.  The  straight,  correct,  hideously  modern 
lines  of  her  figure  bespoke  a  real  eighteen-dollar  corset. 
Realest  of  all,  there  reposed  on  Miss  Jevne' s  bosom 
a  bar  pin  of  platinum  and  diamonds — very  real  dia- 
monds set  in  a  severely  plain  but  very  real  bar  of 
precious  platinum.  So  if  you  except  Miss  Jevne' s 
changeless  colour,  her  artificial  smile,  her  glittering 
hair  and  her  undulating  head-of-the-department  walk, 
you  can  see  that  everything  about  Miss  Jevne  was 
as  real  as  money  can  make  one. 

Miss  Jevne,  when  she  deigned  to  notice  Ray  Willets 


THE  GIRL  WHO  WENT  RIGHT  209 

at  all,  called  her  "girl,"  thus:  "Girl,  get  down  one  of 
those  Number  Seventeens  for  me — with  the  pink 
ribbons."  Ray  did  not  resent  the  tone.  She  thought 
about  Miss  Jevne  as  she  worked.  She  thought  about 
her  at  night  when  she  was  washing  and  ironing  her 
other  shirtwaist  for  next  day's  wear.  In  the  Hals  ted 
Street  Bazaar  the  girls  had  been  on  terms  of  dreadful 
intimacy  with  those  affairs  in  each  other's  lives  which 
popularly  are  supposed  to  be  private  knowledge. 
They  knew  the  sum  which  each  earned  per  week; 
how  much  they  turned  in  to  help  swell  the  family 
coffers  and  how  much  they  were  allowed  to  keep  for 
their  own  use.  They  knew  each  time  a  girl  spent  a 
quarter  for  a  cheap  sailor  collar  or  a  pair  of  near-silk 
stockings.  Ray  Willets,  who  wanted  passionately  to 
be  different,  whose  hands  so  loved  the  touch  of  the 
lacy,  silky  garments  that  made  up  the  lingerie  and 
negligee  departments,  recognised  the  perfection  of  Miss 
Jevne 's  faultless  realness — recognised  it,  appreciated 
it,  envied  it.  It  worried  her  too.  How  did  she  do  it? 
How  did  one  go  about  attaining  the  same  degree  of 
realness? 

Meanwhile  she  worked.  She  learned  quickly.  She 
took  care  always  to  be  cheerful,  interested,  polite. 
After  a  short  week's  handling  of  lacy  silken  garments 
she  ceased  to  feel  a  shock  when  she  saw  Miss  Jevne 
displaying  a  robe-de-nuit  made  up  of  white  cloud  and 
sea-foam  and  languidly  assuring  the  customer  that  of 
course  it  wasn't  to  be  expected  that  you  could  get  a 


210  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

fine  handmade  lace  at  that  price — only  twenty-seven- 
fifty.  Now  if  she  cared  to  look  at  something  really 
fine — made  entirely  by  hand — why 

The  end  of  the  first  ten  days  found  so  much  knowl- 
edge crammed  into  Ray  Willets'  clever,  ambitious 
little  head  that  the  pink  of  her  cheeks  had  deepened 
to  carmine,  as  a  child  grows  flushed  and  too  bright- 
eyed  when  overstimulated  and  overtired. 

Miss  Myrtle,  the  store  beauty,  strolled  up  to  Ray, 
who  was  straightening  a  pile  of  corset  covers  and 
brassieres.  Miss  Myrtle  was  the  store's  star  cloak-and- 
suit  model.  Tall,  svelte,  graceful,  lovely  in  line  and 
contour,  she  was  remarkably  like  one  of  those  exquisite 
imbeciles  that  Rossetti  used  to  love  to  paint.  Hers 
were  the  great  cowlike  eyes,  the  wonderful  oval  face, 
the  marvellous  little  nose,  the  perfect  lips  and  chin. 
Miss  Myrtle  could  don  a  forty-dollar  gown,  parade 
it  before  a  possible  purchaser,  and  make  it  look  like 
an  imported  model  at  one  hundred  and  twenty-five. 
When  Miss  Myrtle  opened  those  exquisite  lips  and 
spoke  you  got  a  shock  that  hurt.  She  laid  one  cool 
slim  finger  on  Ray's  ruddy  cheek. 

"Sure  enough!"  she  drawled  nasally.  " Where ja 
get  it  anyway,  kid?  You  must  of  been  brought  up 
on  peaches  'n'  cream  and  slept  in  a  pink  cloud  some- 
wheres." 

"Me!"  laughed  Ray,  her  deft  fingers  busy  straight- 
ening a  bow  here,  a  ruffle  of  lace  there.  "Me!  The 
L-train  runs  so  near  my  bed  that  if  it  was  ever  to  get 


THE  GIRL  WHO  WENT  RIGHT  211 

a  notion  to  take  a  short  cut  it  would  slice  off  my  legs 
to  the  knees." 

"Live  at  home?"  Miss  Myrtle's  grasshopper  mind 
never  dwelt  long  on  one  subject. 

"Well,  sure,"  replied  Ray.  "Did  you  think  I  had 
a  flat  up  on  the  Drive?" 

"I  live  at  home  too,"  Miss  Myrtle  announced  im- 
pressively. She  was  leaning  indolently  against  the 
table.  Her  eyes  followed  the  deft,  quick  movements 
of  Ray's  slender,  capable  hands.  Miss  Myrtle  always 
leaned  when  there  was  anything  to  lean  on.  Invol- 
untarily she  fell  into  melting  poses.  One  shoulder  always 
drooped  slightly,  one  toe  always  trailed  a  bit  like 
the  picture  on  the  cover  of  the  fashion  magazines, 
one  hand  and  arm  always  followed  the  line  of  her 
draperies  while  the  other  was  raised  to  hip  or  breast 
or  head. 

Ray's  busy  hands  paused  a  moment.  She  looked 
up  at  the  picturesque  Myrtle.  "All  the  girls  do, 
don't  they?" 

"Huh?"  said  Myrtle  blankly. 

"Live  at  home,  I  mean?  The  application  blank 
says " 

"Say,  you've  got  clever  hands,  ain't  you?"  put  in 
Miss  Myrtle  irrelevantly.  She  looked  ruefully  at  her 
own  short,  stubby,  unintelligent  hands,  that  so  per- 
fectly reflected  her  character  in  that  marvellous  way 
hands  have.  "Mine  are  stupid-looking.  I'll  bet  you'll 
get  on."  She  sagged  to  the  other  hip  with  a  weary 


212  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

gracefulness.    "I  ain't  got  no  brains,"  she  complained. 

"Where  do  they  live  then?"  persisted  Ray. 

"Who?  Oh,  I  live  at  home" — again  virtuously — 
"but  I've  got  some  heart  if  I  am  dumb.  My  folks 
couldn't  get  along  without  what  I  bring  home  every 
week.  A  lot  of  the  girls  have  flats.  But  that  don't 
last.  Now  Jevne " 

"Yes?"  said  Ray  eagerly.  Her  plump  face  with  its 
intelligent  eyes  was  all  aglow. 

Miss  Myrtle  lowered  her  voice  discreetly.  "Her 
own  folks  don't  know  where  she  lives.  They  says  she 
sends  'em  money  every  month,  but  with  the  under- 
standing that  they  don't  try  to  come  to  see  her.  They 
live  way  over  on  the  West  Side  somewhere.  She 
makes  her  buying  trip  to  Europe  every  year.  Speaks 
French  and  everything.  They  say  when  she  started 
to  earn  real  money  she  just  cut  loose  from  her  folks. 
They  was  a  drag  on  her  and  she  wanted  to  get  to  the 
top." 

"Say,  that  pin's  real,  ain't  it?" 

"Real?  Well,  I  should  say  it  is!  Catch  Jevne  wearir  j 
anything  that's  phony.  I  saw  her  at  the  theatre  one 
night.  Dressed!  Well,  you'd  have  thought  that  birds 
of  paradise  were  national  pests,  like  English  sparrows. 
Not  that  she  looked  loud.  But  that  quiet,  rich  ele- 
gance, you  know,  that  just  smells  of  money.  Say,  but 
I'll  bet  she  has  her  lonesome  evenings!" 

Ray  Willets'  eyes  darted  across  the  long  room  and 
rested  upon  the  shining  black-clad  figure  of  Miss 


THE  GIRL  WHO  WENT  RIGHT  213 

Jevne  moving  about  against  the  luxurious  ivory-and- 
rose  background  of  the  French  Room. 

"  She— she  left  her  folks,  h'm?"  she  mused  aloud. 

Miss  Myrtle,  the  brainless,  regarded  the  tips  of 
her  shabby  boots. 

"What  did  it  get  her?"  she  asked  as  though  to 
herself.  "I  know  what  it  does  to  a  girl,  seeing  and 
handling  stuff  that's  made  for  millionaires,  you  get  a 
taste  for  it  yourself.  Take  it  from  me,  it  ain't  the 
six-dollar  girl  that  needs  looking  after.  She's  taking 
her  little  pay  envelope  home  to  her  mother  that's  a 
widow  and  it  goes  to  buy  milk  for  the  kids.  Sometimes 
I  think  the  more  you  get  the  more  you  want.  Some- 
body ought  to  turn  that  vice  inquiry  on  to  the  tracks 
of  that  thirty-dollar-a-week  girl  hi  the  Irish  crochet 
waist  and  the  diamond  bar  pin.  She'd  make  swell 
readin'." 

There  fell  a  little  silence  between  the  two — a  silence 
of  which  neither  was  conscious.  Both  were  thinking, 
Myrtle  disjointedly,  purposelessly,  all  unconscious  that 
her  slow,  untrained  mind  had  groped  for  a  great  and 
vital  truth  and  found  it;  Ray  quickly,  eagerly,  con- 
nectedly, a  new  and  daring  resolve  growing  with 
lightning  rapidity. 

"There's  another  new  baby  at  our  house,"  she  said 
aloud  suddenly.  "It  cries  all  night  pretty  near." 

"Ain't  they  fierce?"  laughed  Myrtle.  "And  yet 
I  dunno " 

She  fell  silent  again.    Then  with  the  half-sign  with 


214  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

which  we  waken  from  day  dreams  she  moved  away 
in  response  to  the  beckoning  finger  of  a  saleswoman 
in  the  evening-coat  section.  Ten  minutes  later  her 
exquisite  face  rose  above  the  soft  folds  of  a  black 
charmeuse  coat  that  rippled  away  from  her  slender, 
supple  body  in  lines  that  a  sculptor  dreams  of  and 
never  achieves. 

Ray  Willets  finished  straightening  her  counter. 
Trade  was  slow.  She  moved  idly  in  the  direction  of 
the  black-garbed  figure  that  flitted  about  in  the 
costly  atmosphere  of  the  French  section.  It  must 
be  a  very  special  customer  to  claim  Miss  Jevne's 
expert  services.  Ray  glanced  in  through  the  half- 
opened  glass  and  ivory-enamel  doors. 

"Here,  girl,"  called  Miss  Jevne.  Ray  paused  and 
entered.  Miss  Jevne  was  frowning.  "Miss  Myrtle's 
busy.  Just  slip  this  on.  Careful  now.  Keep  your 
arms  close  to  your  head.'5 

She  slipped  a  marvellously  wrought  garment  over 
Ray's  sleek  head.  Fluffy  drifts  of  equally  exquisite 
lingerie  lay  scattered  about  on  chairs,  over  mirrors, 
across  showtables.  On  one  of  the  fragile  little  ivory- 
and-rose  chairs,  in  the  centre  of  the  costly  little  room, 
sat  a  large,  blonde,  perfumed  woman  who  clanked  and 
rustled  and  swished  as  she  moved.  Her  eyes  were 
white-lidded  and  heavy,  but  strangely  bright.  One 
ungloved  hand  was  very  white  too,  but  pudgy  and 
covered  so  thickly  with  gems  that  your  eye  could 
get  no  clear  picture  of  any  single  stone  or  setting. 


THE  GIRL  WHO  WENT  RIGHT  215 

Ray,  clad  in  the  diaphanous  folds  of  the  robe-de-nuit 
that  was  so  beautifully  adorned  with  delicate  em- 
broideries wrought  by  the  patient,  needle-scarred 
fingers  of  some  silent,  white-faced  nun  in  a  far-away 
convent,  paced  slowly  up  and  down  the  short  length 
of  the  room  that  the  critical  eye  of  this  coarse,  un- 
lettered creature  might  behold  the  wonders  woven 
by  this  weary  French  nun,  and,  beholding,  approve. 

"It  ain't  bad,"  spake  the  blonde  woman  grudgingly. 
"How  much  did  you  say?" 

"Ninety-five,"  Miss  Jevne  made  answer  smoothly. 
"I  selected  it  myself  when  I  was  in  France  my  last 
trip.  A  bargain." 

She  slid  the  robe  carefully  over  Ray's  head.  The 
frown  came  once  more  to  her  brow.  She  bent  close 
to  Ray's  ear.  "Your  waist's  ripped  under  the  left 
arm.  Disgraceful ! ' ' 

The  blonde  woman  moved  and  jangled  a  bit  in  her 
chair.  "Well,  I'll  take  it,"  she  sighed.  "Look  at  the 
colour  on  that  girl!  And  it's  real  too."  She  rose  heavily 
and  came  over  to  Ray,  reached  up  and  pinched  her 
cheek  appraisingly  with  perfumed  white  thumb  and 
forefinger. 

"That'll  do,  girl,"  said  Miss  Jevne  sweetly.  "Take 
this  along  and  change  these  ribbons  from  blue  to 
pink." 

Ray  Willets  bore  the  fairy  garment  away  with  her. 
She  bore  it  tenderly,  almost  reverently.  It  was  more 
than  a  garment.  It  represented  in  her  mind  a  new 


216  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

standard  of  all  that  was  beautiful  and  exquisite  and 
desirable. 

Ten  days  before  the  formal  opening  of  the  new 
twelve-story  addition  there  was  issued  from  the  super- 
intendent's office  an  order  that  made  a  little  flurry 
among  the  clerks  in  the  sections  devoted  to  women's 
dress.  The  new  store  when  thrown  open  would  mark 
an  epoch  in  the  retail  drygoods  business  of  the  city, 
the  order  began.  Thousands  were  to  be  spent  on  per- 
ishable decorations  alone.  The  highest  type  of  patron- 
age was  to  be  catered  to.  Therefore  the  women  in 
the  lingerie,  negligee,  millinery,  dress,  suit  and  corset 
sections  were  requested  to  wear  during  opening  week 
a  modest  but  modish  black  one-piece  gown  that  would 
blend  with  the  air  of  elegance  which  those  departments 
were  to  maintain. 

Ray  Willets  of  the  lingerie  and  negligee  sections  read 
her  order  slip  slowly.  Then  she  reread  it.  Then  she 
did  a  mental  sum  in  simple  arithmetic.  A  childish  sum 
it  was.  And  yet  before  she  got  her  answer  the  solving 
of  it  had  stamped  on  her  face  a  certain  hard,  set, 
resolute  look. 

The  store  management  had  chosen  Wednesday  to 
be  the  opening  day.  By  eight-thirty  o'clock  Wednesday 
morning  the  French  lingerie,  millinery  and  dress 
sections,  with  their  women  clerks  garbed  in  modest 
but  modish  black  one-piece  gowns,  looked  like  a 
levee  at  Buckingham  when  the  court  is  in  mourn- 
ing. But  the  ladies-in-waiting,  grouped  about  here 


THE  GIRL  WHO  WENT  RIGHT  217 

and  there,  fell  back  in  respectful  silence  when  there 
paced  down  the  aisle  the  queen  royal  in  the  person 
of  Miss  Jevne.  There  is  a  certain  sort  of  black  gown 
that  is  more  startling  and  daring  than  scarlet.  Miss 
Jevne's  was  that  style.  Fast  black  you  might  term 
it.  Miss  Jevne  was  aware  of  the  flurry  and  flutter 
that  followed  her  majestic  progress  down  the  aisle 
to  her  own  section.  She  knew  that  each  eye  was 
caught  in  the  tip  of  the  little  dog-eared  train  that 
slipped  and  slunh  and  wriggled  along  the  ground, 
thence  up  to  the  soft  drapery  caught  so  cunningly 
just  below  the  knee,  up  higher  to  the  marvelously 
simple  sash  that  swayed  with  each  step,  to  the  soft  folds 
of  black  against  which  rested  the  very  real  diamond 
and  platinum  bar  phi,  up  to  the  lace  at  her  throat, 
and  then  stopping,  blinking  and  staring  again  gazed 
fixedly  at  the  string  of  pearls  that  lay  about  her  throat, 
pearls  rosily  pink,  mistily  grey.  An  aura  of  self- 
satisfaction  enveloping  her,  Miss  Jevne  disappeared 
behind  the  rose-garlanded  portals  of  the  new  cream- 
and-mauve  French  section.  And  there  the  aura  van- 
ished, quivering.  For  standing  before  one  of  the 
plate-glass  cases  and  patting  into  place  with  deft 
fingers  the  satin  bow  of  a  hand-wrought  chemise 
was  Ray  Willets,  in  her  shiny  little  black  serge  skirt 
and  the  braver  of  her  two  white  shirtwaists. 

Miss  Jevne  quickened  her  pace.  Ray  turned.  Her 
bright  brown  eyes  grew  brighter  at  sight  of  Miss 
levne's  wondrous  black.  Miss  Jevne,  her  train  wound 


2i8  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

round  her  feet  like  an  actress'  photograph,  lifted  her 
eyebrows  to  an  unbelievable  height. 

"Explain  that  costume!"    she  said. 

"Costume?"     repeated  Ray,  fencing. 

Miss  Jevne's  thin  lips  grew  thinner.  "You  under- 
stood that  women  in  this  department  were  to  wear 
black  one-piece  gowns  this  week!" 

Ray  smiled  a  little  twisted  smile.  "Yes,  I  under- 
stood." 

"Then  what " 

Ray's  little  smile  grew  a  trifle  more  uncertain. 

" — I  had  the  money — last  week — I  was  going  to The 

baby  took  sick — the  heat  I  guess,  coming  so  sudden. 

We  had  the  doctor — and  medicine — I Say,  your 

own  folks  come  before  black  one-piece  dresses!" 

Miss  Jevne's  cold  eyes  saw  the  careful  patch  under 
Ray's  left  arm  where  a  few  days  before  the  torn  place 
had  won  her  a  reproof.  It  was  the  last  straw. 

"You  can't  stay  in  this  department  in  that  rig!" 

"Who  says  so?"  snapped  Ray  with  a  flash  of 
Halsted  Street  bravado.  "If  my  customers  want  a 
peek  at  Paquin  I'll  send  'em  to  you." 

"I'll  show  you  who  says  so!"  retorted  Miss  Jevne, 
quite  losing  sight  of  the  queen  business.  The  stately 
form  of  the  floor  manager  was  visible  among  the 
glass  showcases  beyond.  Miss  Jevne  sought  him 
agitatedly.  All  the  little  sagging  lines  about  her  mouth 
showed  up  sharply,  defying  years  of  careful  massage. 

The  floor  manager  bent  his  stately  head  and  listened. 


THE  GIRL  WHO  WENT  RIGHT  219 

Then,  led  by  Miss  Jevne,  he  approached  Ray  Willets, 
whose  deft  fingers,  trembling  a  very  little  now, 
were  still  pretending  to  adjust  the  perfect  pink-satin 
bow. 

The  manager  touched  her  on  the  arm  not  unkindly. 
"  Report  for  work  in  the  kitchen  utensils,  fifth  floor," 
he  said.  Then  at  sight  of  the  girl's  face:  "We  can't 
have  one  disobeying  orders,  you  know.  The  rest  of 
the  clerks  would  raise  a  row  in  no  time." 

Down  in  the  kitchen  utensils  and  household  goods 
there  was  no  rule  demanding  modest  but  modish  one- 
piece  gowns.  In  the  kitchenware  one  could  don  black 
sateen  sleevelets  to  protect  one's  clean  white  waist 
without  breaking  the  department's  tenets  of  fashion. 
You  could  even  pin  a  handkerchief  across  the  front 
of  your  waist,  if  your  job  was  that  of  dusting  the 
granite  ware. 

At  first  Ray's  delicate  fingers,  accustomed  to  the 
touch  of  soft,  sheer  white  stuff  and  ribbon  and  lace 
and  silk,  shrank  from  contact  with  meat  grinders,  and 
aluminum  stewpans,  and  egg  beaters,  and  waffle 
irons,  and  pie  tins.  She  handled  them  contemptuously. 
She  sold  them  listlessly.  After  weeks  of  expatiating  to 
customers  on  the  beauties  and  excellencies  of  gossamer 
lingerie  she  found  it  difficult  to  work  up  enthusiasm 
over  the  virtues  of  dishpans  and  spice  boxes.  By 
noon  she  was  less  resentful.  By  two  o'clock  she  was 
saying  to  a  fellow  clerk: 

"Well,  anyway,  in  this  section  you  don't  have  to 


220  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

tell  a  woman  how  graceful  and  charming  she  s  going 
to  look  while  she's  working  the  washing  machine." 

She  was  a  born  saleswoman.  In  spite  of  herself  she 
became  interested  in  the  buying  problems  of  the 
practical  and  plain- visaged  housewives  who  patronised 
this  section.  By  three  o'clock  she  was  looking  thought- 
ful— thoughtful  and  contented. 

Then  came  the  summons.  The  lingerie  section 
was  swamped!  Report  to  Miss  Jevne  at  once!  Almost 
regretfully  Ray  gave  her  customer  over  to  an  idle 
clerk  and  sought  out  Miss  Jevne.  Some  of  that  lady's 
statuesqueness  was  gone.  The  bar  pin  on  her  bosom 
rose  and  fell  rapidly.  She  espied  Ray  and  met  her 
halfway.  In  her  hand  she  carried  a  soft  black  some- 
thing which  she  thrust  at  Ray. 

"Here,  put  that  on  in  one  of  the  fitting  rooms.  Be 
quick  about  it.  It's  your  size.  The  department's 
swamped.  Hurry  now ! ' ' 

Ray  took  from  Miss  Jevne  the  black  silk  gown, 
modest  but  modish.  There  was  no  joy  in  Ray's  face. 
Ten  minutes  later  she  emerged  in  the  limp  and  clinging 
little  frock  that  toned  down  her  colour  and  made  her 
plumpness  seem  but  rounded  charm. 

The  big  store  will  talk  for  many  a  day  of  that  after- 
noon and  the  three  afternoons  that  followed,  until 
Sunday  brought  pause  to  the  thousands  of  feet  beating 
a  ceaseless  tattoo  up  and  down  the  thronged  aisles. 
On  the  Monday  following  thousands  swarmed  down 
upon  the  store  again,  but  not  in  such  overwhelming 


THE  GIRL  WHO  WENT  RIGHT  221 

numbers.  There  were  breathing  spaces.  It  was  during 
one  of  these  that  Miss  Myrtle,  the  beauty,  found 
time  for  a  brief  moment's  chat  with  Ray  Willets. 

Ray  was  straightening  her  counter  again.  She  had 
a  passion  for  order.  Myrtle  eyed  her  wearily.  Her 
slender  shoulders  had  carried  an  endless  number  and 
variety  of  garments  during  those  four  days  and  her 
feet  had  paced  weary  miles  that  those  garments  might 
the  better  be  displayed. 

" Black's  grand  on  you,"  observed  Myrtle.  "Tones 
you  down."  She  glanced  sharply  at  the  gown.  "Looks 
just  like  one  of  our  eighteen-dollar  models.  Copy 
it?" 

"No,"  said  Ray,  still  straightening  petticoats  and 
corset  covers.  Myrtle  reached  out  a  weary,  graceful 
arm  and  touched  one  of  the  lacy  piles  adorned  with 
cunning  bows  of  pink  and  blue  to  catch  the  shopping 
eye. 

"Ain't  that  sweet!"  she  exclaimed.  "I'm  crazy 
about  that  shadow  lace.  It's  swell  under  voiles.  I 
wonder  if  I  could  take  one  of  them  home  to  copy  it." 

Ray  glanced  up.  "Oh,  that!"  she  said  contemptu- 
ously. "That's  just  a  cheap  skirt.  Only  twelve-fifty. 
Machine-made  lace.  Imitation  embroidery " 

She  stopped.  She  stared  a  moment  at  Myrtle  with 
the  fixed  and  wide-eyed  gaze  of  one  who  does  not  see. 

"What'd  I  just  say  to  you?" 

"Huh?"    ejaculated    Myrtle,    mystified. 

"What'd  I  just  say? "  repeated  Ray. 


222  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

Myrtle  laughed,  half  understanding.  "You  said 
that  was  a  cheap  junk  skirt  at  only  twelve-fifty, 
with  machine  lace  and  imitation " 

But  Ray  Willets  did  not  wait  to  hear  the  rest. 
She  was  off  down  the  aisle  toward  the  elevator  marked 
"Employees."  The  superintendent's  office  was  on  the 
ninth  floor.  She  stopped  there.  The  grey  superintend- 
ent was  writing  at  his  desk.  He  did  not  look  up  as 
Ray  entered,  thus  observing  rules  one  and  two  in  the 
proper  conduct  of  superintendents  when  interviewing 
employees.  Ray  Willets,  standing  by  his  desk,  did 
not  cough  or  wriggle  or  rustle  her  skirts  or  sag  on 
one  hip.  A  consciousness  of  her  quiet  penetrated 
the  superintendent's  mind.  He  glanced  up  hurriedly 
over  his  left  shoulder.  Then  he  laid  down  his  pencil 
and  sat  up  slowly. 

"Oh,  it's  you!"    he  said. 

"Yes,  it's  me,"  replied  Ray  Willets  simply.  "I've 
been  here  a  month  to-day." 

"Oh,  yes."  He  ran  his  fingers  through  his  hair 
so  that  the  brown  forelock  stood  away  from  the  grey. 
"You've  lost  some  of  your  roses,"  he  said,  and  tapped 
his  cheek.  "What's  the  trouble?" 

"I  guess  it's  the  dress,"  explained  Ray,  and  glanced 
down  at  the  folds  of  her  gown.  She  hesitated  a  moment 
awkwardly.  "You  said  you'd  send  for  me  at  the 
end  of  the  month.  You  didn't." 

"That's  all  right,"  said  the  grey  superintendent. 
"I  was  pretty  sure  I  hadn't  made  a  mistake.  I  can 


THE  GIRL  WHO  WENT  RIGHT  223 

gauge  applicants  pretty  fairly.  Let's  see — you're  in 
the  lingerie,  aren't  you?" 

"Yes." 

Then  with  a  rush:  " That's  what  I  want  to  talk 
to  you  about.  I've  changed  my  mind.  I  don't  want 
to  stay  in  the  lingeries.  I'd  like  to  be  transferred  to 
the  kitchen  utensils  and  household  goods." 

"Transferred!  WeU,  I'll  see  what  I  can  do.  What 
was  the  name  now?  I  forget." 

A  queer  look  stole  into  Ray  Willets'  face,  a  look  of 
determination  and  shrewdness. 

"Name?"  she  said.  "My  name  is  Rachel  Wile tzky." 


VIII 

THE  HOOKER-UP-THE-BACK 

MISS  SADIE  CORN  was  not  a  charmer,  but 
when  you  handed  your  room-key  to  her  you 
found  yourself  stopping  to  chat  a  moment.  If  you 
were  the  right  kind  you  showed  her  your  wife's  picture 
in  the  front  of  your  watch.  If  you  were  the  wrong 
kind,  with  your  scant  hair  carefully  combed  to  hide 
the  bald  spot,  you  showed  her  the  newspaper  clipping 
tjiat  you  carried  in  your  vest  pocket.  Following 
inspection  of  the  first,  Sadie  Corn  would  say:  "Now 
that's  what  I  call  a  sweet  face!  How  old  is  the  young- 
est?" Upon  perusal  the  second  was  returned  with 
dignity  and:  "Is  that  supposed  to  be  funny?"  In 
each  case  Sadie  Corn  had  you  placed  for  life. 

She  possessed  the  invaluable  gift  of  the  floor  clerk, 
did  Sadie  Corn — that  of  remembering  names  and 
faces.  Though  you  had  registered  at  the  Hotel  Mag- 
nifique  but  the  night  before,  for  the  first  time,  Sadie 
Corn  would  look  up  at  you  over  her  glasses  as  she  laid 
your  key  in  its  proper  row,  and  say:  "Good  morning, 
Mr.  Schultz!  Sleep  well?" 

"Me!"  you  would  stammer,  surprised  and  gratified. 

"Me!  Fine!  H'm — Thanks!"    Whereupon  you  would 

224 


THE   HOOKER-UP-THE-BACK  225 

cross  your  right  foot  over  your  left  nonchalantly 
and  enjoy  that  brief  moment's  chat  with  Floor  Clerk 
Number  Two.  You  went  back  to  Ishpeming,  Michi- 
gan, with  three  new  impressions:  The  first  was  that  you 
were  becoming  a  personage  of  considerable  importance. 
The  second  was  that  the  Magnifique  realised  this  great 
truth  and  was  grateful  for  your  patronage.  The  third 
was  that  New  York  was  a  friendly  little  hole  after  all! 

Miss  Sadie  Corn  was  dean  of  the  Hotel  Magnifique's 
floor  clerks.  The  primary  requisite  in  successful  floor 
clerkship  is  homeliness.  The  second  is  discreet  age. 
The  third  is  tact.  And  for  the  benefit  of  those  who 
think  the  duties  of  a  floor  clerk  end  when  she  takes 
your  key  when  you  leave  your  room,  and  hands  it 
back  as  you  return,  it  may  be  mentioned  that  the 
fourth,  fifth,  sixth  and  seventh  requisites  are  diplo- 
macy, ingenuity,  unlimited  patience  and  a  comprehen- 
sive knowledge  of  human  nature.  Ambassadors  have 
been  known  to  keep  their  jobs  on  less  than  that. 

She  had  come  to  the  Magnifique  at  thirty-three,  a 
plain,  spare,  sallow  woman,  with  a  quiet,  capable 
manner,  a  pungent  trick  of  the  tongue  on  occasion,  a 
sparse  fluff  of  pale-coloured  hair,  and  big,  bony- 
knuckled  hands,  such  as  you  see  on  women  who  have 
the  gift  of  humanness.  She  was  forty-eight  now — 
still  plain,  still  spare,  still  sallow.  Those  bony,  big- 
knuckled  fingers  had  handed  keys  to  potentates,  and 
pork-packers,  and  millinery  buyers  from  Seattle;  and 
to  princes  incognito,  and  paupers  much  the  same — the 


226  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

difference  being  that  the  princes  dressed  down  to  the 
part,  while  the  paupers  dressed  up  to  it. 

Time,  experience,  understanding  and  the  daily 
dealing  with  ever-changing  humanity  had  brought 
certain  lines  into  Sadie  Corn's  face.  So  skilfully  were 
they  placed  that  the  unobservant  put  them  down  as 
wrinkles  on  the  countenance  of  a  homely,  middle- 
aged  woman;  but  he  who  read  as  he  ran  saw  that 
the  lines  about  the  eyes  were  quizzical,  shrewd  lines, 
which  come  from  the  practice  of  gauging  character  at  a 
glance;  that  the  mouth-markings  meant  tolerance  and 
sympathy  and  humour;  that  the  forehead  furrows  had 
been  carved  there  by  those  master  chisellers,  suffering 
and  sacrifice. 

In  the  last  three  or  four  years  Sadie  Corn  had  taken 
to  wearing  a  little  lavender-and- white  crocheted  shawl 
about  her  shoulders  on  cool  days,  and  when  Two-fifty- 
seven,  who  was  a  regular,  caught  his  annual  heavy  cold 
late  in  the  fall,  Sadie  would  ask  him  sharply  whether 
he  had  on  his  winter  flannels.  On  his  replying  hi  the 
negative  she  would  rebuke  him  scathingly  and  demand 
a  bill  of  sizable  denomination;  and  when  her  watch 
was  over  she  would  sally  forth  to  purchase  four  sets 
of  men's  winter  underwear.  As  captain  of  the  Mag- 
nifique's  thirty-four  floor  clerks  Sadie  Corn's  authority 
extended  from  the  parlours  to  the  roof,  but  her  especial 
domain  was  floor  two.  Ensconced  behind  her  little 
desk  in  a  corner,  blocked  hi  by  mailracks,  pantry 
signals,  pneumatic-tube  chutes  and  telephone,  with  a 


THE    HOOKER-UP-THE-BACK  227 

clear  view  of  the  elevators  and  stairway,  Sadie  Corn 
was  mistress  of  the  moods,  manners  and  morals  of  the 
Magnifique's  second  floor. 

It  was  six  thirty  p.  m.  on  Monday  of  Automobile 
Show  Week  when  Sadie  Corn  came  on  watch.  She 
came  on  with  a  lively,  well-developed  case  of  neuralgia 
over  her  right  eye  and  extending  down  into  her  back 
teeth.  With  its  usual  spitefulness  the  attack  had 
chosen  to  make  its  appearance  during  her  long  watch. 
It  never  selected  her  short-watch  days,  when  she 
was  on  duty  only  from  eleven  a.  m.  until  six- thirty 
p.  m. 

Now  with  a  peppermint  bottle  held  close  to  alter- 
nately sniffing  nostrils  Sadie  Corn  was  running  her  eye 
over  the  complex  report  sheet  of  the  floor  clerk  who 
had  just  gone  off  watch.  The  report  was  even  more 
detailed  and  lengthy  than  usual.  Automobile  Show 
Week  meant  that  the  always  prosperous  Magnifique 
was  filled  to  the  eaves  and  turning  them  away.  It 
meant  twice  the  usual  number  of  inside  telephone  calls 
anent  rooms  too  hot,  rooms  too  cold,  radiators  ham- 
mering, radiators  hissing,  windows  that  refused  to 
open,  windows  that  refused  to  shut,  packages  unde- 
livered, hot  water  not  forthcoming.  As  the  human 
buffers  between  guests  and  hotel  management,  it  was 
the  duty  of  Sadie  Corn  and  her  diplomatic  squad  to 
pacify  the  peevish,  to  smooth  the  path  of  the  paying. 

Down  the  hall  strolled  Donahue,  the  house  detec- 
tive— Donahue  the  leisurely.  Donahue  the  keen-eyed, 


228  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

Donahue  the  guileless — looking  in  liis  evening  clothes 
for  all  the  world  like  a  prosperous  diner-out.  He 
smiled  benignly  upon  Sadie  Corn,  and  Sadie  Corn  had 
the  bravery  to  smile  back  in  spite  of  her  neuralgia, 
knowing  well  that  men  have  no  sympathy  with  that 
anguishing  ailment  and  no  understanding  of  it. 

"Everything  serene,  Miss  Corn?"  inquired  Donahue. 

"Everything's  serene,"  said  Sadie  Corn.  "Though 
Two-thirty-three  telephoned  a  minute  ago  to  say  that 
if  the  valet  didn't  bring  his  pants  from  the  presser  in 
the  next  two  seconds  he'd  come  down  the  hall  as  he  is 
and  get  'em.  Perhaps  you'd  better  stay  round." 

Donahue  chuckled  and  passed  on.  Half  way  down 
the  hall  he  retraced  his  steps,  and  stopped  again  before 
Sadie  Corn's  busy  desk.  He  balanced  a  moment 
thoughtfully  from  toe  to  heel,  his  chin  lifted  inquiringly: 
"Keep  your  eye  on  Two-eighteen  and  Two- twenty- 
three  this  morning?" 

"Like  a  lynx!"  answered  Sadie. 

"Anything?" 

"Not  a  thing.  I  guess  they  just  scraped  acquaint- 
ance in  the  Alley  after  dinner,  like  they  sometimes  do. 
A  man  with  eyelashes  like  his  always  speaks  to  any 
woman  alone  who  isn't  pockmarked  and  toothless. 
Two  minutes  after  he's  met  a  girl  his  voice  takes  on 
the  'cello  note.  I  know  his  kind.  Why,  say,  he  even 
tried  waving  those  eyelashes  of  his  at  me  first  time  he 
turned  in  his  key;  and  goodness  knows  I'm  so  homely 
that  pretty  soon  I'll  be  ripe  for  bachelor  floor  thirteen. 


THE   HOOKER-UP-THE-BACK  229 

You  know  as  well  as  I  that  to  qualify  for  that  job  a 
floor  clerk's  got  to  look  like  a  gargoyle." 

"Maybe  they're  all  right,"  said  Donahue  thought- 
fully. "If  it's  just  a  flirtation,  why — anyway,  watch 
'em  this  evening.  The  day  watch  listened  in  and  says 
they've  made  some  date  for  to-night." 

He  was  off  down  the  hall  again  with  his  light,  quick 
step  that  still  had  the  appearance  of  leisureliness. 

The  telephone  at  Sadie's  right  buzzed  warningly. 
Sadie  picked  up  the  receiver  and  plunged  into  the 
busiest  half  hour  of  the  evening.  From  that  moment 
until  seven  o'clock  her  nimble  fingers  and  eyes  and  brain 
and  tongue  directed  the  steps  of  her  little  world.  She 
held  the  telephone  receiver  at  one  ear  and  listened  to 
the  demands  of  incoming  and  outgoing  guests  with  the 
other.  She  jotted  down  reports,  dealt  out  mail  and 
room-keys,  kept  her  neuralgic  eye  on  stairs  and  eleva- 
tors and  halls,  her  sound  orb  on  tube  and  pantry 
signals,  while  through  and  between  and  above  all  she 
guided  the  stream  of  humanity  that  trickled  past  her 
desk — bellhops,  Polish  chambermaids,  messenger  boys, 
guests,  waiters,  parlour  maids. 

Just  before  seven  there  disembarked  at  floor  two 
out  of  the  cream-and-gold  elevator  one  of  those  visions 
that  have  helped  to  make  Fifth  Avenue  a  street  of  the 
worst-dressed  women  in  the  world.  The  vision  was 
Two-eighteen,  and  her  clothes  were  of  the  kind  that 
prepared  you  for  the  shock  that  you  got  when  you 
looked  at  her  face.  Plume  met  fur,  and  fur  met  silk, 


230  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

and  silk  met  lace,  and  lace  met  gold — and  the  whole 
met  and  ran  into  a  riot  of  colour,  and  perfume — and 
little  jangling,  swishing  sounds.  Just  by  glancing  at 
Two-eigh  teen's  feet  in  their  inadequate  openwork 
silk  and  soft  kid  you  knew  that  Two-eighteen' s  lips 
would  be  carmined. 

She  came  down  the  corridor  and  stopped  at  Sadie 
Corn's  desk.  Sadie  Corn  had  her  key  ready  for  her. 
Two-eighteen  took  it  daintily  between  white-gloved 
fingers. 

"I'll  want  a  maid  in  fifteen  minutes,"  she  said.  "Tell 
them  to  send  me  the  one  I  had  yesterday.  The  pretty 
one.  She  isn't  so  clumsy  as  some." 

Sadie  Corn  jotted  down  a  note  without  looking  up. 

"Oh,  Julia?    Sorry — Julia's  busy,"  she  lied. 

Two-eighteen  knew  she  lied,  because  at  that  moment 
there  came  round  the  bend  in  the  broad,  marble 
stairway  that  led  up  from  the  parlour  floor  the  trim, 
slim  figure  of  Julia  herself. 

Two-eighteen  took  a  quick  step  forward.  ' '  Here,  girl ! 
I'll  want  you  to  hook  me  in  fifteen  minutes,"  she  said. 

"Very  well,  ma'am,"  replied  Julia  softly. 

There  passed  between  Sadie  Corn  and  Two-eighteen 
a— well,  you  could  hardly  call  it  a  look,  it  was  so 
fleeting,  so  ephemeral;  that  electric,  pregnant,  mean- 
ing something  that  flashes  between  two  women  who 
dislike  and  understand  each  other.  Then  Two-eighteen 
was  off  down  the  hall  to  her  room. 

Julia  stood  at  the  head  of  the  stairway  just  next 


THE    HOOKER-UP-THE-BACK  231 

to  Sadie's  desk  and  watched  Two-eighteen  until  the 
bend  in  the  corridor  hid  her.  Julia,  of  the  lady's-maid 
staff,  could  never  have  qualified  for  the  position  of 
floor  clerk,  even  if  she  had  chosen  to  bury  herself  in 
lavender-and-white  crocheted  shawls  to  the  tip  of  her 
marvellous  little  Greek  nose.  In  her  frilly  white  cap, 
her  trim  black  gown,  her  immaculate  collar  and  cuffs 
and  apron,  Julia  looked  distractingly  like  the  young 
person  who,  in  the  old  days  of  the  furniture-dusting 
drama,  was  wont  to  inform  you  that  it  was  two  years 
since  young  master  went  away — all  but  her  feet.  The 
feather-duster  person  was  addicted  to  French-heeled, 
beaded  slippers.  Not  so  Julia.  Julia  was  on  her  feet 
for  ten  hours  or  so  a  day.  When  you  subject  your  feet 
to  ten-hour  tortures  you  are  apt  to  pass  by  French- 
heeled  effects  in  favour  of  something  flat-heeled,  laced, 
with  an  easy,  comfortable  crack  here  and  there  at  the 
sides,  and  stockings  with  white  cotton  soles. 

Julia,  at  the  head  of  the  stairway,  stood  looking  after 
Two-eighteen  until  the  tail  of  her  silken  draperies  had 
whisked  round  the  corner.  Then,  still  staring,  Julia 
spoke  resentfully : 

"Life  for  her  is  just  one  darned  pair  of  long  white 
kid  gloves  after  another!  Look  at  her!  Why  is  it  that 
kind  of  a  face  is  always  wearing  the  sables  and  dia- 
monds?" 

"Sables  and  diamonds,"  replied  Sadie  Corn,  sniffing 
essence  of  peppermint,  "seem  a  small  enough  reward 
for  having  to  carry  round  a  mug  like  that!" 


232  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

Julia  came  round  to  the  front  of  Sadie  Corn's  desk. 
Her  eyes  were  brooding,  her  lips  sullen. 

"Oh,  I  don't  know!"  she  said  bitterly.  "Being 
pretty  don't  get  you  anything — just  being  pretty! 
When  I  first  came  I  used  to  wonder  at  those  women 
that  paint  their  faces  and  colour  their  hair,  and  wear 
skirts  that  are  too  tight  and  waists  that  are  too  low. 
But — I  don't  know !  This  town's  so  big  and  so — so  kind 
of  uninterested.  When  you  see  everybody  wearing 
clothes  that  are  more  gorgeous  than  yours,  and  dia- 
monds bigger,  and  limousines  longer  and  blacker  and 
quieter,  it  gives  you  a  kind  of  fever.  You — you  want 
to  make  people  look  at  you  too." 

Sadie  Corn  leaned  back  in  her  chair.  The  pepper- 
mint bottle  was  held  at  her  nose.  It  may  have  been 
that  which  caused  her  eyes  to  narrow  to  mere  slits  as 
she  gazed  at  the  drooping  Julia.  She  said  nothing. 
Suddenly  Julia  seemed  to  feel  the  silence.  She  looked 
down  at  Sadie  Corp-  As  by  a  miracle  all  the  harsh, 
sullen  lines  in  the  girl's  face  vanished,  to  be  replaced 
by  a  lovely  compassion. 

"Your  neuralgy  again,  dearie?"  she  asked  in  pretty 
concern. 

Sadie  sniffed  long  and  audibly  at  the  peppermint 
bottle. 

"If  you  ask  me  I  think  there's  some  imp  inside  of 
my  head  trying  to  push  my  right  eye  out  with  his 
thumb.  Anyway  it  feels  like  that." 

"Poor    old    dear!"    breathed    Julia.       "It's    the 


THE   HOOKER-UP-THE-BACK  233 

weather.     Have  them  send  you  up  a  pot  of  black 
tea." 

"When  you've  got  neuralgy  over  your  right  eye," 
observed  Sadie  Corn  grimly,  "there's  just  one  thing 
helps — that  is  to  crawl  into  bed  in  a  flannel  nightgown, 
with  the  side  of  your  face  resting  on  the  red  rubber 
bosom  of  a  hot- water  bottle.  And  I  can't  do  it;  so 
let's  talk  about  something  cheerful.  Seen  Jo  to-day?" 

There  crept  into  Julia's  face  a  wave  of  colour — not 
the  pink  of  pleasure,  but  the  dull  red  of  pain.  She 
looked  away  from  Sadie's  eyes  and  down  at  her  shabby 
boots.  The  sullen  look  was  in  her  face  once  more. 

"No;  I  ain't  seen  him,"  she  said. 

"What's  the  trouble?"  Sadie  asked. 

"I've  been  busy,"  replied  Julia  airily.  Then,  with 
a  forced  vivacity:  "Though  it's  nothing  to  Auto 
Show  Week  last  year.  I  remember  that  week  I  hooked 
up  until  my  fingers  were  stiff.  You  know  the  way  the 
dresses  fastened  last  winter.  Some  of  'em  ought 
to  have  had  a  map  to  go  by,  they  were  that  compli- 
cated. And  now,  just  when  I've  got  so's  I  can  hook 
any  dress  that  was  ever  intended  for  the  human 
form- 

"  Wasn't  it  Jo  who  said  they  ought  to  give  away  an 
engineering  blueprint  with  every  dress,  when  you  told 
Mm  about  the  way  they  hooked?"  put  in  Sadie. 
"'What's  the  trouble  between  you  and " 

Julia  rattled  on,  unheeding: 

"You  wouldn't  believe  what  a  difference  there's  been 


234  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

since  these  new  peasant  styles  have  come  in!  And  the 
Oriental  craze!  Hook  down  the  side,  most  of  'em — • 
and  they  can  do  'em  themselves  if  they  ain't  too  fat." 

"Remember  Jo  saying  they  ought  to  have  a  hydrau- 
lic press  for  some  of  those  skintight  dames,  when  your 
fingers  were  sore  from  trying  to  squeeze  them  into  their 
casings?  By  the  way,  what's  the  trouble  between 
you  and 

"Makes  an  awful  difference  in  my  tips!"  cut  in  Julia 
deftly.  "I  don't  believe  I've  hooked  up  six  this  eve- 
ning, and  two  of  them  sprung  the  haven' t-any thing- 
but-a-five-dollar-bill-see-you- to-morrow!  Women  are 
devils!  I  wish " 

Sadie  Corn  leaned  forward,  placed  her  hand  on 
Julia's  arm,  and  turned  the  girl  about  so  that  she 
faced  her.  Julia  tried  miserably  to  escape  her  keen 
eyes  and  failed 

"What's  the  trouble  between  you  and  Jo?"  she  de- 
manded for  the  fourth  time.  "Out  with  it  or  I'll  tele- 
phone down  to  the  engine  room  and  ask  him  myself." 

"Oh,  well,  if  you  want  to  know "  She  paused, 

her  eyelids  drooping  again;  then,  with  a  rush:  "Me 
and  Jo  have  quarrelled  again — for  good,  this  time. 
I'm  through!"  ' 

"What  about?" 

"I  s'pose  you'll  say  I'm  to  blame.  Jo's  mother's 
sick  again.  She's  got  to  go  to  the  hospital  and  have 
another  operation.  You  know  what  that  means — 
putting  off  the  wedding  again  until  God  knows  when! 


THE   HOOKER-UP-THE-BACK  235 

I'm  sick  of  it — putting  off  and  putting  off!  I  told  him 
we  might  as  well  quit  and  be  done  with  it.  We'll  never 
get  married  at  this  rate.  Soon's  Jo  gets  enough  put 
by  to  start  us  on,  something  happens.  Last  three 
times  it's  been  his  ma.  Pretty  soon  I'll  be  as  old  and 
wrinkled  and  homely  as " 

"As  me!"  put  in  Sadie  calmly.  "Well,  I  don't 
know's  that's  the  worst  thing  that  can  happen  to  you. 
I'm  happy.  I  had  my  plans,  too,  when  I  was  a  girl 
like  you — not  that  I  was  ever  pretty;  but  I  had  my 
trials.  Funny  how  the  thing  that's  easy  and  the  thing 
that's  right  never  seem  to  be  the  same!" 

"Oh,  I'm  fond  of  Jo's  ma,"  said  Julia,  a  little  shame- 
facedly. "We  get  along  all  right.  She  knows  how  it 
is,  I  guess;  and  feels — well,  in  the  way.  But  when  Jo 
told  me,  I  was  tired  I  guess.  We  had  words.  I  told 
him  there  were  plenty  waiting  for  me  if  he  was  through. 
I  told  him  I  could  have  gone  out  with  a  real  swell  only 
last  Saturday  if  I'd  wanted  to.  What's  a  girl  got 
her  looks  for  if  not  to  have  a  good  time?" 

"Who's  this  you  were  invited  out  by?"  asked  Sadie 
Corn. 

"You  must  have  noticed  him,"  said  Julia,  dimpling. 
"  He's  as  handsome  as  an  actor.  Name's  Vernier.  He's 
in  two-twenty-three." 

There  came  the  look  of  steel  into  Sadie  Corn's  eyes. 

"Look  here,  Julia!  You've  been  here  long  enough  to 
know  that  you're  not  to  listen  to  the  talk  of  the  men 
guests  round  here.  Two-twenty-three  isn't  your  kind 


236  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

—and  you  know  it !  If  I  catch  you  talking  to  him  again 
I'll- 

The  telephone  at  her  elbow  sounded  sharply.  She 
answered  it  absently,  her  eyes,  with  their  expression  of 
pain  and  remonstrance,  still  unshrinking  before  the 
onslaught  of  Julia's  glare.  Then  her  expression 
changed.  A  look  of  consternation  came  into  her  face. 

"Right  away,  madam!"  she  said,  at  the  telephone. 
"Right  away!  You  won't  have  to  wait  another  min- 
ute." She  hung  up  the  receiver  and  waved  Julia  away 
with  a  gesture.  "It's  Two-eighteen.  Yrou  promised 
to  be  there  in  fifteen  minutes.  She's  been  waiting  and 
her  voice  sounds  like  a  saw.  Better  be  careful  how 
you  handle  her." 

Julia's  head,  with  its  sleek,  satiny  coils  of  black  hair 
that  waved  away  so  bewitchingly  from  the  cream  of 
her  skin,  came  up  with  a  jerk. 

"I'm  tired  of  being  careful  of  other  people's  feelings. 
Let  somebody  be  careful  of  mine  for  a  change."  She 
walked  off  down  the  hall,  the  little  head  still  held  high. 
A  half  dozen  paces  and  she  turned.  "What  was  it 
you  said  you'd  do  to  me  if  you  caught  me  talking  to 
him  again?"  she  sneered. 

A  miserable  twinge  of  pain  shot  through  Sadie  Corn's 
eye.  to  be  followed  by  a  wave  of  nausea  that  swept 
over  her.  They  alone  were  responsible  for  her  answer. 

"I'll  report  you!"  she  snapped,  and  was  sorry  at  once. 

Julia  turned  again,  walked  down  the  corridor  and 
round  the  corner  in  the  direction  of  two-eighteen. 


THE   HOOKER-UP-THE-BACK  237 

Long  after  Julia  had  disappeared  Sadie  Corn  stared 
after  her — miserable,  regretful. 

Julia  knocked  once  at  the  door  of  two-eighteen  and 
turned  the  knob  before  a  high,  shrill  voice  cried: 

"Come!" 

Two-eighteen  was  standing  in  the  centre  of  the 
floor  in  scant  satin  knickerbockers  and  tight  brassiere. 
The  blazing  folds  of  a  cerise  satin  gown  held  hi  her 
hands  made  a  great,  crude  patch  of  colour  in  the  neutral- 
tinted  bedroom.  The  air  was  heavy  with  scent.  Hair, 
teeth,  eyes,  fingernails — Two-eighteen  glowed  and 
glistened.  Chairs  and  bed  held  odds  and  ends. 

"  Where' ve  you  been,  girl?"  shrilled  Two-eighteen. 
"I've  been  waiting  like  a  fool!  I  told  you  to  be  herein 
fifteen  minutes." 

"My  stop-watch  isn't  working  right,"  replied  Julia 
impudently  and  took  the  cerise  satin  gown  in  her  two 
hands. 

She  made  a  ring  of  the  gown's  opening,  and  through 
that  cerise  frame  her  eyes  met  those  of  Two-eighteen. 

"Careful  of  my  hair!"  Two-eighteen  warned  her, 
and  ducked  her  head  to  the  practised  movement  of 
Julia's  arms.  The  cerise  gown  dropped  to  her  shoulders 
without  grazing  a  hair.  Two-eighteen  breathed  a  sigh 
of  relief.  She  turned  to  face  the  mirror. 

"It  starts  at  the  left,  three  hooks;  then  to  the 
centre;  then  back  four — under  the  arm  and  down  the 
middle  again.  That  chiffon  comes  over  like  a  drape." 

She  picked  up  a  buffer  from  the  litter  of  ivory  and 


238  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

silver  on  the  dresser  and  began  to  polish  her  already 
glittering  nails,  turning  her  head  this  way  and  that, 
preening  her  neck,  biting  her  scarlet  lips  to  deepen 
their  crimson,  opening  her  eyes  wide  and  half  closing 
them  languorously.  Julia,  down  on  her  knees  in  com- 
bat with  the  trickiest  of  the  hooks,  glanced  up  and  saw. 
Two-eighteen  caught  the  glance  in  the  mirror.  She 
stopped  her  idle  polishing  and  preening  to  study  the 
glowing  and  lovely  little  face  that  looked  up  at  her.  A 
certain  queer  expression  grew  in  her  eyes — a  specu- 
lative, eager  look. 

"Tell  me,  little  girl,"  she  said,  "What  do  you  do 
round  here?" 

Julia  turned  from  the  mirror  to  the  last  of  the  hooks, 
her  fingers  working  nimbly. 

"Me?  My  regular  job  is  working.  Don't  jerk, 
please.  I've  fastened  this  one  three  times." 

"Working!"  laughed  Two-eighteen,  fingering  the 
diamonds  at  her  throat.  "What  does  a  pretty  girl 
like  you  want  to  do  that  for?" 

"Hook  off  here,"  said  Julia.    "Shall  I  sew  it?" 

"Pin  it!"  snapped  Two-eighteen. 

Julia's  tidy  nature  revolted. 

"It'll  take  just  a  minute  to  catch  it  with  thread " 

Two-eighteen  whirled  about  in  one  of  the  sudden  hot 
rages  of  her  kind: 

"Pin  it,  you  fool!    Pin  it!    I  told  you  I  was  late!" 

Julia  paused  a  moment,  the  red  surging  into  her  face. 
Then  in  silence  she  knelt  and  wove  a  pin  deftly  in  and 


THE   HOOKER-UP-THE-BACK  239 

out.  When  she  rose  from  her  knees  her  face  was  quite 
white. 

" There,  that's  the  girl!"  said  Two-eighteen  blithely, 
her  rage  forgotten.  "  Just  pat  this  over  my  shoulders." 

She  handed  a  powder-puff  to  Julia  and  turned  her 
back  to  the  broad  mirror,  holding  a  hand-glass  high 
as  she  watched  the  powder-laden  puff  leaving  a  snowy 
coat  on  the  neck  and  shoulders  and  back  so  generously 
displayed  in  the  cherry-coloured  gown.  Julia's  face 
was  set  and  hard. 

"Oh,  now,  don't  sulk!"  coaxed  Two-eighteen  good- 
naturedly,  all  of  a  sudden.  "  I  hate  sulky  girls.  I  like 
people  to  be  cheerful  round  me." 

"I'm  not  used  to  being  yelled  at,"  Julia  said  resent- 
fully. 

Two-eighteen  patted  her  cheek  lightly.  "You  come 
out  with  me  to-morrow  and  I'll  buy  you  something 
pretty.  Don't  you  like  pretty  clothes?" 

"Yes;  but " 

"Of  course  you  do.  Every  girl  does — especially 
pretty  ones  like  you.  How  do  you  like  this  dress? 
Don't  you  think  it  smart?" 

She  turned  squarely  to  face  Julia,  trying  on  her  the 
tricks  she  had  practised  in  the  mirror.  A  little  cruel 
look  came  into  Julia's  face. 

"Last  year's,  isn't  it?"  she  asked  coolly. 

' '  This !"  cried  Two-eighteen,  stiffening.  ' '  Last  year's ! 
I  got  it  yesterday  on  Fifth  Avenue,  and  paid  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  for  it.  What  do  you " 


240  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

"Oh,  I  believe  you,"  drawled  Julia.  "They  can  tell 
a  New  Yorker  from  an  out-of-towner  every  time. 
You  know  the  really  new  thing  is  the  Bulgarian  effect!" 

"Well,  of  all  the  nerve!"  began  Two-eighteen,  turn- 
ing to  the  mirror  in  a  sort  of  fright.  "Of  all  the— 

What  she  saw  there  seemed  to  reassure.  She  raised 
one  hand  to  push  the  gown  a  little  more  off  the  left 
shoulder. 

"Will  there  be  anything  else?"  inquired  Julia,  stand- 
ing aloof. 

Two-eighteen  turned  reluctantly  from  the  mirror 
and  picked  up  a  jewelled  gold-mesh  bag  that  lay  on 
the  bed.  From  it  she  extracted  a  coin  and  held  it  out 
to  Julia.  It  was  a  generous  coin.  Julia  looked  at  it. 
Her  smouldering  wrath  burst  into  flame. 

"Keep  it!"  she  said  savagely,  and  was  out  of  the 
room  and  down  the  hall. 

Sadie  Corn,  at  her  desk,  looked  up  quickly  as  Julia 
turned  the  corner.  Julia,  her  head  held  high,  kept  her 
eyes  resolutely  away  from  Sadie. 

"Oh,  Julia,  I  want  to  talk  to  you!"  said  Sadie  Corn 
as  Julia  reached  the  stairway.  Julia  began  to  descend 
the  stairs,  unheeding.  Sadie  Corn  rose  and  leaned 
over  the  railing,  her  face  puckered  with  anxiety. 
"Now,  Julia,  girl,  don't  hold  that  up  against  me!  I 
didn't  mean  it.  You  know  that.  You  wouldn't  be 
mad  at  a  poor  old  woman  that's  half  crazy  with  neu- 
ralgy!"  Julia  hesitated,  one  foot  poised  to  take  the 
next  step.  "Come  on  up,"  coaxed  Sadie  Corn,  "and 


THE   HOOKER-UP-THE-BACK  241 

tell  me  what  Two-eighteen's  wearing  this  evening. 
I'm  that  lonesome,  with  nothing  to  do  but  sit  here 
and  watch  the  letter-ghosts  go  flippering  down  the 
mailchute!  Come  on!" 

"What  made  you  say  you'd  report  me?"  demanded 
Julia  bitterly. 

"I'd  have  said  the  same  thing  to  my  own  daughter 
if  I  had  one.  You  know  yourself  I'd  bite  my  tongue 
out  first!" 

"Well!"  said  Julia  slowly,  and  relented.  She  came 
up  the  stairs  almost  shyly.  "Neuralgy  any  better?" 

"Worse!"  said  Sadie  Corn  cheerfully. 

Julia  leaned  against  the  desk  sociably  and  glanced 
down  the  hall. 

"Would  you  believe  it,"  she  snickered,  "she's  wear- 
ing red!  With  that  hair!  She  asked  me  if  I  didn't 
think  she  looked  too  pale.  I  wanted  to  tell  her  that  if 
she  had  any  more  colour,  with  that  dress,  they'd  be 
likely  to  use  the  chemical  sprinklers  on  her  when 
she  struck  the  Alley." 

"Sh-sh-sh!"  breathed  Sadie  in  warning.  Two- 
eighteen,  in  her  shimmering,  flame-coloured  costume, 
was  coming  down  the  hall  toward  the  elevators.  She 
walked  with  the  absurd  and  stumbling  step  that  her 
scant  skirt  necessitated.  With  each  pace  the  slashed 
silken  skirt  parted  to  reveal  a  shameless  glimpse  of 
cerise  silk  stocking.  In  her  wake  came  Venner,  of 
Two- twenty- three — a  strange  contrast  in  his  black 
and  white. 


242  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

Sadie  and  Julia  watched  them  from  the  corner  nook. 
Opposite  the  desk  Two-eighteen  stopped  and  turned 
to  Julia. 

"Just  run  into  my  room  and  pick  things  up  and  hang 
them  away,  will  you?"  she  said.  "I  didn't  have  time — 
and  I  hate  things  all  about  when  I  come  in  dead  tired." 

The  little  formula  of  service  rose  automatically  to 
Julia's  lips. 

"Very  well,  madam,"  she  said. 

Her  eyes  and  Sadie's  followed  the  two  figures  until 
they  had  stepped  into  the  cream-and-gold  elevator 
and  had  vanished.  Sadie,  peppermint  bottle  at  nose, 
spoke  first: 

"She  makes  one  of  those  sandwich  men  with  a  bell, 
on  Sixth  Avenue,  look  like  a  shrinking  violet!" 

Julia's  lower  lip  was  caught  between  her  teeth.  The 
scent  that  had  enveloped  Two-eighteen  as  she  passed 
was  still  in  the  air.  Julia's  nostrils  dilated  as  she 
sniffed  it.  Her  breath  came  a  little  quickly.  Sadie 
Corn  sat  very  still,  watching  her. 

"Look  at  her!"  said  Julia,  her  voice  vibrant.  "Look 
at  her !  Old  and  homely,  and  all  made  up !  I  powdered 
her  neck.  Her  skin's  like  tripe. 

"Now  Julia "  remonstrated  Sadie  Corn  sooth- 
ingly. 

"I  don't  care,"  went  on  Julia  with  a  rush.  "I'm 
young.  And  I'm  pretty  too.  And  I  like  pretty  things. 
It  ain't  fair!  That  was  one  reason  why  I  broke  with 
Jo.  It  wasn't  only  his  mother.  I  told  him  he  couldn't 


THE   HOOKER-UP-THE-BACK  243 

ever  give  me  the  things  I  want  anyway.  You  can't 
help  wanting  'em — seeing  them  all  round  every  day 
on  women  that  aren't  half  as  good-looking  as  you  are! 
I  want  low-cut  dresses  too.  My  neck's  like  milk.  I 
want  silk  underneath,  and  fur  coming  up  on  my  coat 
collar  to  make  my  cheeks  look  pink.  I'm  sick  of  hook- 
ing other  women  up.  I  want  to  stand  in  front  of  a 
mirror,  looking  at  myself,  polishing  my  pink  nails  with 
a  silver  thing  and  having  somebody  else  hook  me  up!" 

In  Sadie  Corn's  eyes  there  was  a  mist  that  could  not 
be  traced  to  neuralgia  or  peppermint. 

"Julia,  girl,"  said  Sadie  Corn,  "ever  since  the  world 
began  there's  been  hookers  and  hooked.  And  there 
always  will  be.  I  was  born  a  hooker.  So  were  you. 
Tune  was  when  I  used  to  cry  out  against  it  too.  But 
shucks!  I  know  better  now.  I  wouldn't  change  places. 
Being  a  hooker  gives  you  such  an  all-round  experience 
like  of  mankind.  The  hooked  only  get  a  front  view. 
They  only  see  faces  and  arms  and  chests.  But  the 
hookers — they  see  the  necks  and  shoulderblades  of 
this  world,  as  well  as  faces.  It's  mighty  broadening — 
being  a  hooker.  It's  the  hookers  that  keep  this  world 
together,  Julia,  and  fastened  up  right.  It  wouldn't 
amount  to  much  if  it  had  to  depend  on  such  as  that!" 
She  nodded  her  head  in  the  direction  the  cerise  figure 
had  taken.  "The  height  of  her  ambition  is  to  get  the 
cuticle  of  her  nails  trained  back  so  perfectly  that  it 
won't  have  to  be  cut;  and  she  don't  feel  decently 
dressed  to  be  seen  in  public  unless  she's  wearing  one 


244  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

of  those  breastplates  of  orchids.  Envy  her!  Why, 
Julia,  don't  you  know  that  as  you  were  standing  here 
in  your  black  dress  as  she  passed  she  was  envying  you !" 

"Envying  me!"  said  Julia,  and  laughed  a  short  laugh 
that  had  little  of  mirth  in  it.  "You  don't  understand, 
Sadie!" 

Sadie  Corn  smiled  a  rather  sad  little  smile. 

"Oh,  yes,  I  do  understand.  Don't  think  because  a 
woman's  homely,  and  always  has  been,  that  she  doesn't 
have  the  same  heartaches  that  a  pretty  woman  has. 
She's  built  just  the  same  inside." 

Julia  turned  her  head  to  stare  at  her  wide-eyed. 
It  was  a  long  and  trying  stare,  as  though  she  now  saw 
Sadie  Com  for  the  first  time. 

Sadie,  smiling  up  at  the  girl,  stood  it  bravely.  Then, 
with  a  sudden  little  gesture,  Julia  patted  the  wrinkled, 
sallow  cheek  and  was  off  down  the  hall  and  round  the 
corner  to  two-eighteen. 

The  lights  still  blazed  in  the  bedroom.  Julia  closed 
the  door  and  stood  with  her  back  to  it,  looking  about 
the  disordered  chamber.  In  that  marvellous  way  a 
room  has  of  reflecting  the  very  personality  of  its 
absent  owner,  room  two-eighteen  bore  silent  testimony 
to  the  manner  of  woman  who  had  just  left  it.  The  air 
was  close  and  overpoweringly  sweet  with  perfume — 
sachet,  powder — the  scent  of  a  bedroom  after  a  vain 
and  selfish  woman  has  left  it.  The  litter  of  toilet  arti- 
cles lay  scattered  about  on  the  dresser.  Chairs  and 
bed  held  garments  of  lace  and  silk.  A  bewildering 


THE   HOOKER-UP-THE-BACK  245 

negligee  hung  limply  over  a  couch;  and  next  it  stood 
a  patent-leather  slipper,  its  mate  on  the  floor. 

Julia  saw  these  things  in  one  accustomed  glance. 
Then  she  advanced  to  the  middle  of  the  room  and 
stooped  to  pick  up  a  pink  wadded  bedroom  slipper 
from  where  it  lay  under  the  bed.  And  her  hand 
touched  a  coat  of  velvet  and  fur  that  had  been  flung 
across  the  counterpane — touched  it  and  rested  there. 

The  coat  was  of  stamped  velvet  and  fur.  Great  cuffs 
of  fur  there  were,  and  a  sumptuous  collar  that  rolled 
from  neck  to  waist.  There  was  a  lining  of  vivid  orange. 
Julia  straightened  up  and  stood  regarding  the  garment, 
her  hands  on  her  hips. 

"I  wonder  if  it's  draped  in  the  back,"  she  said  to 
herself,  and  picked  it  up.  It  was  draped  in  the 
back — bewitchingly.  She  held  it  at  arm's  length, 
turning  it  this  way  and  that.  Then,  as  though  obeying 
some  powerful  force  she  could  not  resist,  Julia  plunged 
her  arms  into  the  satin  of  the  sleeves  and  brought 
the  great  soft  revers  up  about  her  throat.  The  great, 
gorgeous,  shimmering  thing  completely  hid  her  grubby 
little  black  gown.  She  stepped  to  the  mirror  and 
stood  surveying  herself  in  a  sort  of  ecstasy.  Her  cheeks 
glowed  rose-pink  against  the  dark  fur,  as  she  had  known 
they  would.  Her  lovely  little  head,  with  its  coils  of 
black  hair,  rose  flowerlike  from  the  clinging  garment. 
She  was  still  standing  there,  lips  parted,  eyes  wide  with 
delight,  when  the  door  opened  and  closed — and  Venner, 
of  two-twenty-three,  strode  into  the  room. 


246  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

"You  little  beauty!"  exclaimed  Two- twenty- three. 

Julia  had  wheeled  about.  She  stood  staring  at  him, 
eyes  and  lips  wide  with  fright  now.  One  hand  clutched 
the  fur  at  her  breast. 

"Why,  what "  she  gasped. 

Two-twenty-three  laughed. 

"  I  knew  I'd  find  you  here.  I  made  an  excuse  to  come 
up.  Old  Nutcracker  Face  in  the  hall  thinks  I  went 
to  my  own  room."  He  took  two  quick  steps  forward. 
"You  raving  little  Cinderella  beauty,  you!" — And 
he  gathered  Julia,  coat  and  all,  into  his  arms. 

"Let  me  go!"  panted  Julia,  fighting  with  all  the 
strength  of  her  young  arms.  "Let  me  go!" 

"You'll  have  coats  like  this,"  Two-twenty-three 
was  saying  in  her  ear — "a  dozen  of  them!  And  dresses 
too;  and  laces  and  furs !  You'll  be  ten  times  the  beauty 
you  are  now!  And  that's  saying  something.  Listen! 
You  meet  me  to-morrow " 

There  came  a  ring — sudden  and  startling — from 
the  telephone  on  the  wall  near  the  door.  The  man 
uttered  something  and  turned.  Julia  pushed  him 
away,  loosened  the  coat  with  fingers  that  shook  and 
dropped  it  to  the  floor.  It  lay  in  a  shimmering  circle 
about  the  tired  feet  in  their  worn,  cracked  boots. 
And  one  foot  was  raised  suddenly  and  kicked  the  silken 
garment  into  a  heap. 

The  telephone  bell  sounded  again.  Venner,  of  two- 
twenty-three,  plunged  his  hand  into  his  pocket,  took 
out  something  and  pressed  it  in  Julia's  palm,  shutting 


THE   HOOKER-UP-THE-BACK  247 

her  fingers  over  it.  Julia  did  not  need  to  open  them 
and  look  to  see — she  knew  by  the  feel  of  the  crumpled 
paper,  stiff  and  crackling.  He  was  making  for  the  door, 
with  some  last  instructions  that  she  did  not  hear, 
before  she  spoke.  The  telephone  bell  had  stopped  its 
insistent  ringing/ 

Julia  raised  her  arm  and  hurled  at  him  with  all  her 
might  the  yellow-backed  paper  he  had  thrust  in  her 
hand. 

"I'll — I'll  get  my  man  to  whip  you  for  this!"  she 
panted.  "Jo'll  pull  those  eyelashes  of  yours  out  and 
use  'em  for  couplings.  You  miserable  little " 

The  outside  door  opened  again,  striking  Two-twenty- 
three  squarely  in  the  back.  He  crumpled  up  against 
the  wall  with  an  oath. 

Sadie  Corn,  in  the  doorway,  gave  no  heed  to  him. 
Her  eyes  searched  Julia's  flushed  face.  What  she  saw 
there  seemed  to  satisfy  her.  She  turned  to  him  then 
grimly. 

"What  are  you  doing  here?"  Sadie  asked  briskly. 

Two-twenty-three  muttered  something  about  the 
wrong  room  by  mistake.  Julia  laughed. 

"He  lies!"  she  said,  and  pointed  to  the  floor.  "That 
bill  belongs  to  him." 

Sadie  Corn  motioned  to  him. 

"Pick  it  up!"  she  said. 

"I  don't— want  it!"  snarled  Two-twenty-three. 

"Pick — it — up!"  articulated  Sadie  Corn  very  care- 
fully. He  came  forward,  stooped,  put  the  bill  in  his 


248  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

pocket.  "You  check  out  to-night!"  said  Sadie  Corn. 
Then,  at  a  muttered  remonstrance  from  him:  "Oh, 
yes,  you  will!  So  will  Two-eighteen.  Huh?  Oh,  I 
guess  she  will!  Say,  what  do  you  think  a  floor  clerk's 
for?  A  human  keyrack?  I'll  give  you  until  twelve. 
I'm  off  watch  at  twelve-thirty."  Then,  to  Julia,  as  he 
slunk  off:  "Why  didn't  you  answer  the  phone?  That 
was  me  ringing!" 

A  sob  caught  Julia  in  the  throat,  but  she  turned  it 
into  a  laugh. 

"I  didn't  hardly  hear  it.  I  was  busy  promising  him 
a  licking  from  Jo." 

Sadie  Corn  opened  the  door. 

"Come  on  down  the  hall.  I've  left  no  one  at  the 
desk.  It  was  Jo  I  was  telephoning  you  for." 

Julia  grasped  her  arm  with  gripping  fingers. 

"Jo!    Heain't- 

Sadie  Corn  took  the  girl's  hand  in  hers. 

"Jo's  all  right!  But  Jo's  mother  won't  bother  you 
any  more,  Sadie.  You'll  never  need  to  give  up  your 
housekeeping  nest-egg  for  her  again.  Jo  told  me  to 
tell  you." 

Julia  stared  at  her  for  one  dreadful  moment,  her 
fist,  with  the  knuckles  showing  white,  pressed  against 
her  mouth.  A  little  moan  came  from  her  that,  repeated 
over  and  over,  took  the  form  of  words: 

"Oh,  Sadie,  if  I  could  only  take  back  what  I  said  to 
Jo !  If  I  could  only  take  back  what  I  said  to  Jo !  He'll 
never  forgive  me  now!  And  I'll  never  forgive  myself1." 


THE   HOOKER-UP-THE-BACK  249 

"He'll  forgive  you,"  said  Sadie  Corn;  "but  you'll 
never  forgive  yourself.  That's  as  it  should  be.  That, 
you  know,  is  our  punishment  for  what  we  say  in 
thoughtlessness  and  anger." 

They  turned  the  corridor  corner.  Standing  before 
the  desk  near  the  stairway  was  the  tall  figure  of  Don- 
ahue, house  detective.  Donahue  had  always  said  that 
Julia  was  too  pretty  to  be  a  hotel  employe. 

"Straighten  up,  Julia!"  whispered  Sadie  Corn. 
"And  smile  if  it  kills  you — unless  you  want  to  make 
me  tell  the  whole  of  it  to  Donahue." 

Donahue,  the  keen-eyed,  balancing,  as  was  his 
wont,  from  toe  to  heel  and  back  again,  his  chin  thrust 
out  inquiringly,  surveyed  the  pair. 

"Off  watch?"  inquired  Donahue  pleasantly,  staring 
at  Julia's  eyes.  "What's  wrong  with  Julia?" 

"Neuralgy!"  said  Sadie  Corn  crisply.  "I've  just 
told  her  to  quit  rubbing  her  head  with  peppermint. 
She's  got  the  stuff  into  her  eyes." 

She  picked  up  the  bottle  on  her  desk  and  studied 
its  label,  frowning.  "Run  along  downstairs,  Julia. 
I'll  see  if  they  won't  send  you  some  hot  tea." 

Donahue,  hands  clasped  behind  him,  was  walking 
off  in  his  leisurely,  light-footed  way. 

"Everything  serene?"  he  called  back  over  his  big 
shoulder. 

The  neuralgic  eye  closed  and  opened,  perhaps  with 
another  twinge. 

"Everything's  serene!"  said  Sadie  Corn. 


IX 

THE    GUIDING    MISS    GOWD 

IT  HAS  long  been  the  canny  custom  of  writers  on 
travel  bent  to  defray  the  expense  of  their  journey- 
ings  by  dashing  off  tales  filled  with  foreign  flavour. 
Dickens  did  it,  and  Dante.  It  has  been  tried  all  the 
way  from  Tasso  to  Twain;  from  Ruskin  to  Roosevelt. 
A  pleasing  custom  it  is  and  thrifty  withal,  and  one 
that  has  saved  many  a  one  but  poorly  prepared  for 
the  European  robber  in  uniform  the  moist  and  un- 
pleasant task  of  swimming  home. 

Your  writer  spends  seven  days,  say,  in  Paris.  Result? 
The  Latin  Quarter  story.  Ohy  mes  enfants!  That 
Parisian  student-life  story!  There  is  the  beautiful 
young  American  girl — beautiful,  but  as  earnest  and 
good  as  she  is  beautiful,  and  as  talented  as  she  is 
earnest  and  good.  And  wedded,  be  it  understood,  to 
her  art — preferably  painting  or  singing.  From  New 
York!  Her  name  must  be  something  prim,  yet  winsome. 
Lois  will  do — Lois,  la  belle  Americaine.  Then  the 
hero — American  too.  Madly  in  love  with  Lois.  Tall 
he  is  and  always  clean-limbed — not  handsome,  but 
with  one  of  those  strong,  rugged  faces.  His  name,  too, 

must  be  strong  and  plain,  yet  snappy.  David  is  always 

250 


THE  GUIDING  MISS  GOWD  251' 

good.  The  villain  is  French,  fascinating,  and  wears  a 
tiny  black  moustache  to  hide  his  mouth,  which  is  cruel. 

The  rest  is  simple.  A  little  French  restaurant — 
Henri's.  Know  you  not  Henri's?  Tiens!  But  Henri's 
is  not  for  the  tourist.  A  dim  little  shop  and  shabby, 
modestly  tucked  away  in  the  shadows  of  the  Rue 
Brie.  But  the  food!  Ah,  the — whadd'you-call'ems — 
in  the  savoury  sauce,  that  is  Henri's  secret !  The  tender, 
broiled  poularde,  done  to  a  turn!  The  bottle  of  red 
wine !  Mais  oui;  there  one  can  dine  under  the  watchful 
glare  of  Rosa,  the  plump,  black-eyed  wife  of  the 
concierge.  With  a  snowy  apron  about  her  buxom 
waist,  and  a  pot  of  red  geraniums  somewhere,  and  a 
sleek,  lazy  cat  contentedly  purring  in  the  sunny 
window! 

Then  Lois  starving  in  a  garret.  Temptation!  Sacre 
bleu!  Zut!  Also  nom  d'un  nom!  Enter  David.  Bon! 
Oh,  David,  take  me  away!  Take  me  back  to  dear  old 
Schenectady.  Love  is  more  than  all  else,  especially 
when  no  one  will  buy  your  pictures. 

The  Italian  story  recipe  is  even  simpler.  A  pearl 
necklace;  a  low,  clear  whistle.  Was  it  the  call  of  a 
bird  or  a  signal?  His-s-s-st!  Again!  A  black  cape; 
the  flash  of  steel  in  the  moonlight;  the  sound  of  a 
splash  in  the  water;  a  sickening  gurgle;  a  stifled  cry! 
Silence!  His-st!  Vendetta! 

There  is  the  story  made  in  Germany,  filled  with  stu- 
dents and  steins  and  scars;  with  beer  and  blonde,  blue- 
eyed  Madchen  garbed — the  Madchen,  that  is — in 


25 2  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

black  velvet  bodice,  white  chemisette,  scarlet  skirt 
with  two  rows  of  black  ribbon  at  the  bottom,  and  one 
yellow  braid  over  the  shoulder.  Especially  is  this 
easily  accomplished  if  actually  written  in  the  Vaterland, 
German  typewriting  machines  being  equipped  with 
umlauts. 

And  yet  not  one  of  these  formulas  would  seem  to 
fit  the  story  of  Mary  Gowd.  Mary  Gowd,  with  her 
frumpy  English  hat  and  her  dreadful  English  fringe, 
and  her  brick-red  English  cheeks,  which  not  even 
the  enervating  Italian  sun,  the  years  of  bad  Italian 
food  or  the  damp  and  dim  little  Roman  room  had 
been  able  to  sallow.  Mary  Gowd,  with  her  shabby 
blue  suit  and  her  mangy  bit  of  fur,  and  the  glint  of 
humour  in  her  pale  blue  eyes.  Many,  many  times 
that  same  glint  of  humour  had  saved  English  Mary 
Gowd  from  seeking  peace  in  the  muddy  old  Tiber. 

Her  card  read  imposingly  thus:  Mary  M.  Gowd, 
Cicerone.  Certificated  and  Licensed  Lecturer  on  Art 
and  Archaeology.  Via  del  Babbuino,  Roma. 

In  plain  language  Mary  Gowd  was  a  guide.  Now, 
Rome  is  swarming  with  guides;  but  they  are  men 
guides.  They  besiege  you  in  front  of  Cook's.  They 
perch  at  the  top  of  the  Capitoline  Hill,  ready  to  pounce 
on  you  when  you  arrive  panting  from  your  climb  up 
the  shallow  steps.  They  lie  in  wait  in  the  doorway 
of  St.  Peter's.  Bland,  suave,  smiling,  quiet,  but  in- 
sistent, they  dog  you  from  the  Vatican  to  the  Cata- 
combs. 


THE  GUIDING  MISS  GOWD  253 

Hundreds  there  are  of  these  little  men — undersized, 
even  in  this  land  of  small  men — dapper,  agile,  low- 
voiced,  crafty.  In  his  inner  coat  pocket  each  carries 
his  credentials,  greasy,  thumb-worn  documents,  but 
precious.  He  glances  at  your  shoes — this  insinuating 
one — or  at  your  hat,  or  at  any  of  those  myriad  signs 
by  which  he  marks  you  for  his  own.  Then  up  he  steps 
and  speaks  to  you  in  the  language  of  your  country, 
be  you  French,  German,  English,  Spanish  or  American. 

And  each  one  of  this  clan — each  slim,  feline  little 
man  in  blue  serge,  white-toothed,  gimlet-eyed,  smooth- 
tongued, brisk — hated  Mary  Gowd.  They  hated  her 
with  the  hate  of  an  Italian  for  an  outlander — with  the 
hate  of  an  Italian  for  a  woman  who  works  with  her 
brain — with  the  hate  of  an  Italian  who  sees  another 
taking  the  bread  out  of  his  mouth.  All  this,  coupled 
with  the  fact  that  your  Italian  is  a  natural-born  hater, 
may  indicate  that  the  life  of  Mary  Gowd  had  not  the 
lyric  lilt  that  life  is  commonly  reputed  to  have  in 
sunny  Italy. 

Oh,  there  is  no  formula  for  Mary  Gowd's  story. 
In  the  first  pl'ace,  the  tale  of  how  Mary  Gowd  came  to 
be  the  one  woman  guide  in  Rome  runs  like  melodrama. 
And  Mary  herself,  from  her  white  cotton  gloves,  darned 
at  the  fingers,  to  her  figure,  which  mysteriously  re- 
mained the  same  in  spite  of  fifteen  years  of  scant 
Italian  fare,  does  not  fit  gracefully  into  the  role  of 
heroine. 

Perhaps  that  story,  scraped  to  bedrock,  shorn  of 


254  CHEERFUL—BY  REQUEST 

all  floral  features,  may  gain  in  force  what  it  loses  in 
artistry. 

She  was  twenty-two  when  she  came  to  Rome — 
twenty-two  and  art-mad.  She  had  been  pretty,  with 
that  pink-cheesecloth  prettiness  of  the  provincial 
English  girl,  who  degenerates  into  blowsiness  at  thirty. 
Since  seventeen  she  had  saved  and  scrimped  and  con- 
trived for  this  modest  Roman  holiday.  She  had  given 
painting  lessons — even  painted  on  loathsome  china — 
that  the  little  hoard  might  grow.  And  when  at  last 
there  was  enough  she  had  come  to  this  Rome  against 
the  protests  of  the  fussy  English  father  and  the  spinster 
English  sister. 

The  man  she  met  quite  casually  one  morning  in  the 
Sistine  Chapel — perhaps  he  bumped  her  elbow  as  they 
stood  staring  up  at  the  glorious  ceiling.  A  thousand 
pardons!  Ah,  an  artist  too?  In  five  minutes  they  were 
chattering  like  mad — she  in  bad  French  and  exquisite 
English;  he  in  bad  English  and  exquisite  French. 
He  knew  Rome — its  pictures,  its  glories,  its  history — 
as  only  an  Italian  can.  And  he  taught  her  art,  and 
he  taught  her  Italian,  and  he  taught  her  love. 

And  so  they  were  married,  or  ostensibly  married, 
though  Mary  did  not  know  the  truth  until  three 
months  later  when  he  left  her  quite  as  casually  as  he 
had  met  her,  taking  with  him  the  little  hoard,  and 
Mary's  English  trinkets,  and  Mary's  English  roses, 
and  Mary's  broken  pride. 

So!   There  was  no  going  back  to  the  fussy  father  or 


THE  GUIDING  MISS  GOWD  255 

the  spinster  sister.  She  came  very  near  resting  her 
head  on  Father  Tiber's  breast  in  those  days.  She  would 
sit  in  the  great  galleries  for  hours,  staring  at  the  wonder- 
works. Then,  one  day,  again  in  the  Sistine  Chapel, 
a  fussy  little  American  woman  had  approached  her, 
her  eyes  snapping.  Mary  was  sketching,  or  trying  to. 

"Do  you  speak  English?" 

"I  am  English,"  said  Mary. 

The  feathers  in  the  hat  of  the  fussy  little  woman 
quivered. 

"Then  tell  me,  is  this  ceiling  by  Raphael?" 

"Ceiling!"  gasped  Mary  Gowd.   "Raphael!" 

Then,  very  gently,  she  gave  the  master's  name. 

"Of  course!"  snapped  the  excited  little  American. 
"I'm  one  of  a  party  of  eight.  We're  all  school-teachers, 
And  this  guide" — she  waved  a  hand  in  the  direction 
of  a  rapt  little  group  standing  in  the  agonising  position 
the  ceiling  demands — "just  informed  us  that  the 
ceiling  is  by  Raphael.  And  we're  paying  him  ten  lire!" 

"Won't  you  sit  here?"  Mary  Gowd  made  a  place 
for  her.  "I'll  tell  you." 

And  she  did  tell  her,  finding  a  certain  relief  from  her 
pain  in  unfolding  to  this  commonplace  little  woman 
the  glory  of  the  masterpiece  among  masterpieces. 

"Why — why,"  gasped  her  listener,  who  had  long 
since  beckoned  the  other  seven  with  frantic  finger, 
"how  beautifully  you  explain  it!  How  much  you  know! 
Oh,  why  can't  they  talk  as  you  do?"  she  wailed,  her 
eyes  full  of  contempt  for  the  despised  guide. 


256  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

"I  am  happy  to  have  helped  you/'  said  Mary  Gowd. 

"Helped!  Why,  there  are  hundreds  of  Americans 
who  would  give  anything  to  have  some  one  like  you 
to  be  with  them  in  Rome." 

Mary  Gowd's  whole  body  stiffened.  She  stared 
fixedly  at  the  grateful  little  American  school-teacher. 

"Some  one  like  me 

The  little  teacher  blushed  very  red. 

"I  beg  your  pardon.  I  wasn't  thinking.  Of  course 
you  don't  need  to  do  any  such  work,  but  I  just  couldn't 
help  saying 

"But  I  do  need  work,"  interrupted  Mary  Gowd. 
She  stood  up,  her  cheeks  pink  again  for  the  moment,  her 
eyes  bright.  "I  thank  you.  Oh,  I  thank  you!" 

"You  thank  me!"   faltered  the  American. 

But  Mary  Gowd  had  folded  her  sketchbook  and 
was  off,  through  the  vestibule,  down  the  splendid 
corridor,  past  the  giant  Swiss  guard,  to  the  noisy, 
sunny  Piazza  di  San  Pietro. 

That  had  been  fifteen  years  ago.  She  had  taken  her 
guide's  examinations  and  passed  them.  She  knew 
her  Rome  from  the  crypt  of  St.  Peter's  to  the  top  of  the 
Janiculum  Hill;  from  the  Campagna  to  Tivoli.  She 
read  and  studied  and  learned.  She  delved  into  the 
past  and  brought  up  strange  and  interesting  truths. 
She  could  tell  you  weird  stories  of  those  white  marble 
men  who  lay  so  peacefully  beneath  St.  Peter's  dome, 
their  ringed  hands  crossed  on  their  breasts.  She 
learned  to  juggle  dates  with  an  ease  that  brought 


THE  GUIDING  MISS  GOWD  257 

gasps  from  her  American  clients,  with  their  his- 
tory that  went  back  little  more  than  one  hundred 
years. 

She  learned  to  designate  as  new  anything  that  failed 
to  have  its  origin  stamped  B.  c.;  and  the  Magnificent 
Augustus,  he  who  boasted  of  finding  Rome  brick  and 
leaving  it  marble,  was  a  mere  nouveau  riche  with  his 
miserable  A.  D.  14. 

She  was  as  much  at  home  in'the  Thermae  of  Caracalla 
as  you  in  your  white-and-blue-tiled  bath.  She  could 
juggle  the  history  of  emperors  with  one  hand  and  the 
scandals  of  half  a  dozen  kings  with  the  other.  No  ruin 
was  too  unimportant  for  her  attention — no  picture 
too  faded  for  her  research.  She  had  the  centuries  at 
her  tongue's  end.  Michelangelo  and  Canova  were  her 
brothers  in  art,  and  Rome  was  to  her  as  your  back- 
garden  patch  is  to  you. 

Mary  Gowd  hated  this  Rome  as  only  an  English 
woman  can  who  has  spent  fifteen  years  in  that  nest  of 
intrigue.  She  fought  the  whole  race  of  Roman  guides 
day  after  day.  She  no  longer  turned  sick  and  faint 
when  they  hissed  after  her  vile  Italian  epithets  that 
her  American  or  English  clients  quite  failed  to  under- 
stand. Quite  unconcernedly  she  would  jam  down  the 
lever  of  the  taximeter  the  wily  Italian  cabby  had 
pulled  only  halfway  so  that  the  meter  might  register 
double.  And  when  that  foul-mouthed  one  crowned 
his  heap  of  abuse  by  screaming  "Camorrista!  Camor- 
r-rista!"  at  her,  she  would  merely  shrug  her  shoulders 


258  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

and  say  " Andate  presto!"  to  show  him  she  was  above 
quarrelling  with  a  cabman. 

She  ate  eggs  and  bread,  and  drank  the  red  wine, 
never  having  conquered  her  disgust  for  Italian  meat 
since  first  she  saw  the  filthy  carcasses,  fly-infested,  dust- 
covered,  loathsome,  being  carted  through  the  swarming 
streets. 

It  was  six  o'clock  of  an  evening  early  in  March 
when  Mary  Gowd  went  home  to  the  murky  little  room 
in  the  Via  Babbuino.  She  was  too  tired  to  notice  the 
sunset.  She  was  too  tired  to  smile  at  the  red-eyed 
baby  of  the  cobbler's  wife,  who  lived  in  the  rear.  She 
was  too  tired  to  ask  Tina  for  the  letters  that  seldom 
came.  It  had  been  a  particularly  trying  day,  spent 
with  a  party  of  twenty  Germans,  who  had  said  "Herr- 
lich!"  when  she  showed  them  the  marvels  of  the 
Vatican  and  "Kolossal!"  at  the  grandeur  of  the 
Colosseum  and,  for  the  rest,  had  kept  their  noses  buried 
in  their  Baedekers. 

She  groped  her  way  cautiously  down  the  black 
hall.  Tina  had  a  habit  of  leaving  sundry  brushes, 
pans  or  babies  lying  about.  After  the  warmth  of 
the  March  sun  outdoors  the  house  was  cold  with 
that  clammy,  penetrating,  tomblike  chill  of  the  Italian 
home. 

"Tina!"    she  called. 

From  the'  rear  of  the  house  came  a  cackle  of  voices. 
Tina  was  gossiping.  There  was  no  smell  of  supper  in 
the  air.  Mary  Gowd  shrugged  patient  shoulders. 


THE  GUIDING  MISS  GOWD  259 

Then,  before  taking  off  the  dowdy  hat,  before  removing 
the  white  cotton  gloves,  she  went  to  the  window  that 
overlooked  the  noisy  Via  Babbuino,  closed  the  massive 
wooden  shutters,  fastened  the  heavy  windows  and 
drew  the  thick  curtains.  Then  she  stood  a  moment, 
eyes  shut.  In  that  little  room  the  roar  of  Rome  was 
tamed  to  a  dull  humming.  Mary  Gowd,  born  and 
bred  amid  the  green  of  Northern  England,  had  never 
become  hardened  to  the  maddening  noises  of  the 
Via  Babbuino:  The  rattle  and  clatter  of  cab  wheels; 
the  clack-clack  of  thousands  of  iron-shod  hoofs;  the 
shrill,  high  cry  of  the  street  venders;  the  blasts  of 
motor  horns  that  seemed  to  rend  the  narrow  street; 
the  roar  and  rumble  of  the  electric  trams;  the  wail 
of  fretful  babies;  the  chatter  of  gossiping  women; 
and  above  and  through  and  below  it  all  the  cracking 
of  the  cabman's  whip — that  sceptre  of  the  Roman 
cabby,  that  wand  which  is  one  part  whip  and  nine 
parts  crack.  Sometimes  it  seemed  to  Mary  Gowd 
that  her  brain  was  seared  and  welted  by  the  pistol- 
shot  reports  of  those  eternal  whips. 

She  came  forward  now  and  lighted  a  candle  that 
stood  on  the  table  and  another  on  the  dresser.  Their 
dim  light  seemed  to  make  dimmer  the  dark  little 
room.  She  looked  about^with  a  little  shiver.  Then 
she  sank  into  the  chintz-covered  chair  that  was  the  one 
bit  of  England  in  the  sombre  chamber.  She  took  off 
the  dusty  black  velvet  hat,  passed  a  hand  over  her 
hair  with  a  gesture  that  was  more  tired  than  tidy,  and 


260  CHEERFUL—BY  REQUEST 

sat  back,  her  eyes  shut,  her  body  inert,  her  head 
sagging  on  her  breast. 

The  voices  in  the  back  of  the  house  had  ceased. 
From  the  kitchen  came  the  slipslop  of  Tina's  slovenly 
feet.  Mary  Gowd  opened  her  eyes  and  sat  up  very 
straight  as  Tina  stood  in  the  doorway.  There  was 
nothing  picturesque  about  Tina.  Tina  was  not  one  of 
those  olive-tinted,  melting-eyed  daughters  of  Italy 
that  one  meets  in  fiction.  Looking  at  her  yellow 
skin  and  her  wrinkles  and  her  coarse  hands,  one 
wondered  whether  she  was  fifty,  or  sixty,  or  one 
hundred,  as  is  the  way  with  Italian  women  of  Tina's 
class  at  thirty-five. 

Ah,  the  signora  was  tired!  She  smiled  pityingly. 
Tired!  Not  at  all,  Mary  Gowd  assured  her  briskly. 
She  knew  that  Tinajiespised  her  because  she  worked 
like  a  man. 

"Something  fine  for  supper?"  Mary  Gowd  asked 
mockingly.  Her  Italian  was  like  that  of  the  Romans 
themselves,  so  soft,  so  liquid,  so  perfect. 

Tina  nodded  vigorously,  her  long  earrings  shaking. 

"Vitello" — she  began,  her  tongue  clinging  lovingly 
to  the  double  /  sound — "Vee-tail-loh " 

"Ugh!"  shuddered  Mary  Gowd.  That  eternal  veal 
and  mutton,  pinkish,  flabby,  sickening! 

"What  then?"  demanded  the  outraged  Tina. 

Mary  Gowd  stood  up,  making  gestures,  hat  in  hand. 

"Clotted  cream,  with  strawberries,"  she  said  in 
English,  an  unknown  language,  which  always  roused 


THE  GUIDING  MISS  GOWD  261 

Tina  to  fury.  "And  a  steak — a  real  steak  of  real  beef, 
three  inches  thick  and  covered  with  onions  fried  in 
butter.  And  creamed  chicken,  and  English  hothouse 
tomatoes,  and  fresh  peaches  and  little  hot  rolls,  and 
coffee  that  isn't  licorice  and  ink,  and — and— 

Tina's  dangling  earrings  disappeared  in  her  shoulders. 
Her  outspread  palms  were  eloquent. 

"Crazy,  these  English!"  said  the  shoulders  and 
palms.  "Mad!" 

Mary  Gowd  threw  her  hat  on  the  bed,  pushed  aside 
a  screen  and  busied  herself  with  a  little  alcohol  stove. 

"I  shall  prepare  an  omelet,"  she  said  over  her 
shoulder  in  Italian.  "Also,  I  have  here  bread  and 
wine."  * 

"Ugh!"  grunted  Tina. 

"Ugh,  veal!"  grunted  Mary  Gowd.  Then,  as 
Tina's  flapping  feet  turned  away :  "Oh,  Tina !  Letters?" 

Tina  fumbled  at  the  bosom  of  her  gown,  thought 
deeply  and  drew  out  a  crumpled  envelope.  It  had 
been  opened  and  clumsily  closed  again.  Fifteen  years 
ago  Mary  Gowd  would  have  raged.  Now  she  shrugged 
philosophic  shoulders.  Tina  stole  hairpins,  opened 
letters  that  she  could  not  hope  to  decipher,  rummaged 
bureau  drawers,  rifled  cupboards  and  fingered  books; 
but  then,  so  did  most  of  the  other  Tinas  in  Rome. 
What  use  to  complain? 

Mary  Gowd  opened  the  thumb-marked  letter,  bring- 
ing it  close  to  the  candlelight.  As  she  read,  a  smile 
appeared. 


262  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

"Huh!  Gregg/' she  said,  "Americans!"  She  glanced 
again  at  the  hotel  letterhead  on  the  stationery — the 
best  hotel  in  Naples.  ' '  Americans — and  rich ! ' ' 

The  pleased  little  smile  lingered  as  she  beat  the 
omelet  briskly  for  her  supper. 

The  Henry  D.  Greggs  arrived  in  Rome  on  the  two 
o'clock  train  from  Naples.  And  all  the  Roman  knights 
of  the  waving  palm  espied  them  from  afar  and  hailed 
them  with  whoops  of  joy.  The  season  was  still  young 
and  the  Henry  D.  Greggs  looked  like  money — not 
Italian  money,  which  is  reckoned  in  lire,  but  American 
money,  which  mounts  grandly  to  dollars.  The  post- 
card men  in  the  Piazza  delle  Terme  sped  after  their 
motor  taxi.  The  swarthy  brigand,  with  his  wooden 
box  of  tawdry  souvenirs,  marked  them  as  they  rode 
past.  The  cripple  who  lurked  behind  a  pillar  in  the 
colonnade  threw  aside  his  coat  with  a  practised  hitch 
of  his  shoulder  to  reveal  the  sickeningly  maimed  arm 
that  was  his  stock  in  trade. 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Henry  D.  Gregg  had  left  their  com- 
fortable home  in  Batavia,  Illinois,  with  its  sleeping 
porch,  veranda  and  lawn,  and  seven-passenger  car; 
with  its  two  glistening  bathrooms,  and  its  Oriental 
rugs,  and  its  laundry  hi  the  basement,  and  its  Sunday 
fried  chicken  and  ice  cream,  because  they  felt  that 
Miss  Eleanora  Gregg  ought  to  have  the  benefit  of 
foreign  travel.  Miss  Eleanora  Gregg  thought  so  too: 
in  fact,  she  had  thought  so  first. 

Her  name  was  Eleanora,  but  her  parents  called  her 


THE  GUIDING  MISS  GOWD  263 

Tweetie,  which  really  did  not  sound  so  bad  as  it  might 
if  Tweetie  had  been  one  whit  less  pretty.  Tweetie  was 
so  amazingly,  Americanly  pretty  that  she  could  have 
triumphed  over  a  pet  name  twice  as  absurd. 

The  Greggs  came  to  Rome,  as  has  been  stated,  at 
two  P.  M.  Wednesday.  By  two  P.  M.  Thursday  Tweetie 
had  bought  a  pair  of  long,  dangling  earrings,  a  costume 
with  a  Roman  striped  collar  and  sash,  and  had  learned 
to  loll  back  in  her  cab  in  imitation  of  the  dashing, 
black-eyed,  sallow  women  she  had  seen  driving  on 
the  Pincio.  By  Thursday  evening  she  was  teasing 
Papa  Gregg  for  a  spray  of  white  aigrets,  such  as  those 
same  languorous  ladies  wore  in  feathery  mists  atop 
their  hats. 

"But,  Tweet,"  argued  Papa  Gregg,  "what's  the  use? 
You  can't  take  them  back  with  you.  Custom-house 
regulations  forbid  it." 

The  rather  faded  but  smartly  dressed  Mrs.  Gregg 
asserted  herself: 

"They're  barbarous!  We  had  moving  pictures  at 
the  club  showing  how  they're  torn  from  the  mother 
birds.  No  daughter  of  mine 

"I  don't  care!"  retorted  Tweetie.  "They're  per- 
fectly stunning;  and  I'm  going  to  have  them." 

And  she  had  them — not  that  the  aigret  incident 
is  important;  but  it  may  serve  to  place  the  Greggs 
in  their  respective  niches. 

At  eleven  o'clock  Friday  morning  Mary  Gowd  called 
at  the  Gregg's  hotel,  according  to  appointment.  In 


264  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

far-away  Batavia,  Illinois,  Mrs.  Gregg  had  heard  of 
Mary  Gowd.  And  Mary  Gowd,  with  her  knowledge  of 
everything  Roman — from  the  Forum  to  the  best  place 
at  which  to  buy  pearls — was  to  be  the  staff  on  which 
the  Greggs  were  to  lean. 

"My  husband/'  said  Mrs.  Gregg;  "my  daughter 
Twee — er — Eleanora.  We've  heard  such  wonderful 
things  of  you  from  my  dear  friend  Mrs.  Melville 
Peters,  of  Batavia." 

"Ah,  yes!"  exclaimed  Mary  Gowd.  "Amost charm- 
ing person,  Mrs.  Peters." 

"After  she  came  home  from  Europe  she  read  the 
most  wonderful  paper  on  Rome  before  the  Women's 
West  End  Culture  Club,  of  Batavia.  We're  affiliated 
with  the  National  Federation  of  Women's  Clubs,  as 
you  probably  know;  and 

"Now,  Mother,"  interrupted  Henry  Gregg,  "the 
lady  can't  be  interested  in  your  club." 

"Oh,  but  I  am!"  exclaimed  Mary  Gowd  very 
vivaciously.  ' l  Enormously ! " 

Henry  Gregg  eyed  her  through  his  cigar  smoke 
with  suddenly  narrowed  lids. 

"M-m-m!  Well,  let's  get  to  the  point  anyway. 
I  know  Tweetie  here  is  dying  to  see  St.  Peter's,  and 
aU  that." 

Tweetie  had  settled  back  inscrutably  after  one  com- 
prehensive, disdainful  look  at  Mary  Gowd's  suit,  hat, 
gloves  and  shoes.  Now  she  sat  up,  her  bewitching 
face  glowing  with  interest. 


THE  GUIDING  MISS  GOWD  265 

"Tell  me,"  she  said,  "what  do  they  call  those 
officers  with  the  long  pale-blue  capes  and  the 
silver  helmets  and  the  swords?  And  the  ones  in  dark- 
blue  uniform  with  the  maroon  stripe  at  the  side  of  the 
trousers?  And  do  they  ever  mingle  with  the — that 
is,  there  was  one  of  the  blue  capes  here  at  tea  yester- 
day  " 

Papa  Gregg  laughed  a  great,  comfortable  laugh. 

"Oh,  so  that's  where  you  were  staring  yesterday, 
young  lady!  I  thought  you  acted  kind  of  absent- 
minded."  He  got  up  to  walk  over  and  pinch  Tweetie's 
blushing  cheek. 

So  it  was  that  Mary  Gowd  began  the  process  of 
pouring  the  bloody,  religious,  wanton,  pious,  thrilling, 
dreadful  history  of  Rome  into  the  pretty  and  unheed- 
ing ear  of  Tweetie  Gregg. 

On  the  fourth  morning  after  that  introductory 
meeting  Mary  Gowd  arrived  at  the  hotel  at  ten,  as 
usual,  to  take  charge  of  her  party  for  the  day.  She 
encountered  them  hi  the  hotel  foyer,  an  animated  little 
group  centred  about  a  very  tall,  very  dashing,  very 
black-mustachioed  figure  who  wore  a  long  pale  blue 
cape  thrown  gracefully  over  one  shoulder  as  only  an 
Italian  officer  can  wear  such  a  garment.  He  was 
looking  down  into  the  brilliantly  glowing  face  of  the 
pretty  Eleanora,  and  the  pretty  Eleanora  was  looking 
up  at  him;  and  Pa  and  Ma  Gregg  were  standing  by, 
placidly  pleased. 

A  grim  little  line  appeared  about  Miss   Gowd'* 


266  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

mouth.  Blue  Cape's  black  eyes  saw  it,  even  as  he 
bent  low  over  Mary  Gowd's  hand  at  the  words  of 
introduction. 

"Oh,  Miss  Gowd,"  pouted  Tweetie,  "it's  too  bad 
you  haven't  a  telephone.  You  see,  we  shan't  need 
you  to-day." 

"No?"   said  Miss  Gowd,  and  glanced  at  Blue  Cape. 

"No(;  Signor  Caldini  says  it's  much  too  perfect  a 
day  to  go  poking  about  among  old  ruins  and  things." 

Henry  D.  Gregg  cleared  his  throat  and  took  up  the 
explanation.  "Seems  the — er — Signor  thinks  it  would 
be  just  the  thing  to  take  a  touring  car  and  drive  to 
Tivoli,  and  have  a  bite  of  lunch  there." 

"And  come  back  in  time  to  see  the  Colosseum 
by  moonlight!"  put  in  Tweetie  ecstatically. 

"Oh,  yes!"    said  Mary  Gowd. 

Pa  Gregg  looked  at  his  watch. 

"Well,  I'll  be  running  along,"  he  said.  Then,  in 
answer  to  something  in  Mary  Gowd's  eyes:  "I'm  not 
going  to  Tivoli,  you  see.  I  met  a  man  from  Chicago 
here  at  the  hotel.  He  and  I  are  going  to  chin  awhile 
this  morning.  And  Mrs.  Gregg  and  his  wife  are  going 
on  a  shopping  spree.  Say,  ma,  if  you  need  any  more 
money  speak  up  now,  because  I'm " 

Mary  Gowd  caught  his  coat  sleeve. 

"One  moment!" 

Her  voice  was  very  low.  "You  mean — you  mean 
Miss  Eleanora  will  go  to  Tivoli  and  to  the  Colosseum 
alone — with — with  Signor  Caldini?" 


THE  GUIDING  MISS  GOWD  267 

Henry  Gregg  smiled  indulgently. 

"The  young  folks  always  run  round  alone  at  home. 
We've  got  our  own  car  at  home  in  Batavia,  but 
Tweetie's  beaus  are  always  driving  up  for  her  in " 

Mary  Gowd  turned  her  head  so  that  only  Henry 
Gregg  could  hear  what  she  said. 

"Step  aside  for  just  one  moment.  I  must  talk  to 
you." 

"Well,  what?" 

"Do  as  I  say,"  whispered  Mary  Gowd. 

Something  of  her  earnestness  seemed  to  convey 
a  meaning  to  Henry  Gregg. 

"Just  wait  a  minute,  folks,"  he  said  to  the  group 
of  three,  and  joined  Mary  Gowd,  who  had  chosen  a 
seat  a  dozen  paces  away.  "What's  the  trouble?"  he 
asked  jocularly.  "Hope  you're  not  offended  because 
Tweet  said  we  didn't  need  you  to-day.  You  know 
young  folks -" 

"They  must  not  go  alone,"  said  Mary  Gowd. 

"But " 

"This  is  not  America.  This  is  Italy— this  Caldini 
is  an  Italian." 

"Why,  look  here;  Signor  Caldini  was  introduced 
to  us  last  night.  His  folks  really  belong  to  the  no- 
bility." 

"I  know;  I  know,"  interrupted  Mary  Gowd.  "I 
teL  you  they  cannot  go  alone.  Please  believe  me!  I 
have  been  fifteen  years  in  Rome.  Noble  or  not,  Caldini 
is  an  Italian.  I  ask  you" — she  had  clasped  her  hands 


268  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

and  was  looking  pleadingly  up  into  his  face — "I  beg 
of  you,  let  me  go  with  them.  You  need  not  pay  me 
to-day.  You " 

Henry  Gregg  looked  at  her  very  thoughtfully  and 
a  little  puzzled.  Then  he  glanced  over  at  the  group 
again,  with  Blue  Cape  looking  down  so  eagerly  into 
Twee  tie's  exquisite  face  and  Twee  tie  looking  up  so 
raptly  into  Blue  Cape's  melting  eyes  and  Ma  Gregg 
standing  so  placidly  by.  He  turned  again  to  Mary 
Gowd's  earnest  face. 

"Well,  maybe  you're  right.  They  do  seem  to  use 
chaperons  in  Europe — duennas,  or  whatever  you  call 
'em.  Seems  a  nice  kind  of  chap,  though." 

He  strolled  back  to  the  waiting  group.  From  her 
seat  Mary  Gowd  heard  Mrs.  Gregg's  surprised  exclama- 
tion, saw  Tweetie's  pout,  understood  Caldini's  shrug 
and  sneer.  There  followed  a  little  burst  of  conversa- 
tion. Then,  with  a  little  frown  which  melted  into  a 
smile  for  Blue  Cape,  Tweetie  went  to  her  room  for 
motor  coat  and  trifles  that  the  long  day's  outing 
demanded.  Mrs.  Gregg,  still  voluble,  followed. 

Blue  Cape,  with  a  long  look  at  Mary  Gowd,  went 
out  to  confer  with  the  porter  about  the  motor.  Papa 
Gregg,  hand  in  pockets,  cigar  tilted,  eyes  narrowed, 
stood  irresolutely  hi  the  centre  of  the  great,  gaudy 
foyer.  Then,  with  a  decisive  little  hunch  of  his 
shoulders,  he  came  back  to  where  Mary  Gowd  sat. 

"Did  you  say  you've  been  fifteen  years  in  Rome?" 

"Fifteen  years,"  answered  Mary  Gowd. 


THE  GUIDING  MISS  GOWD  269 

Henry  D.  Gregg  took  his  cigar  from  his  mouth  and 
regarded  it  thoughtfully. 

"Well,  that's  quite  a  spell.  Must  like  it  here." 
Mary  Gowd  said  nothing.  "Can't  say  I'm  crazy 
about  it — that  is,  as  a  place  to  live.  I  said  to  Mother 
last  night:  'Little  old  Batavia's  good  enough  for 
Henry  D.'  Of  course  it's  a  grand  education,  travelling, 
especially  for  Tweetie.  Funny,  I  always  thought  the 
fruit  in  Italy  was  regular  hothouse  stuff — thought 
the  streets  would  just  be  lined  with  trees  all  hung 
with  big,  luscious  oranges.  But,  Lord!  Here  we 
are  at  the  best  hotel  in  Rome,  and  the  fruit  is  worse 
than  the  stuff  the  pushcart  men  at  home  feed  to  their 
families — little  wizened  bananas  and  oranges.  Still, 
it's  grand  here  in  Rome  for  Tweetie.  I  can't  stay 
long — just  ran  away  from  business  to  bring  'em  over; 
but  I'd  like  Tweetie  to  stay  in  Italy  until  she  learns  the 
lingo.  Sings,  too — Tweetie  does;  and  she  and  Ma 
think  they'll  have  her  voice  cultivated  over  here. 
They'll  stay  here  quite  a  while,  I  guess." 

"  Then  you  will  not  be  here  with  them?  "  asked  Mary 
Gowd. 

"Me?  No." 

They  sat  silent  for  a  moment. 

"I  suppose  you're  crazy  about  Rome,"  said  Henry 
Gregg  again.  "There's  a  lot  of  culture  here,  and 
history,  and  all  that;  and— 

"I  hate  Rome!"   said  Mary  Gowd. 

Henry  Gregg  stared  at  her  in  bewilderment. 


270  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

"Then  why  in  Sam  Hill  don't  you  go  back  to 
England?  " 

"I'm  thirty-seven  years  old.  That's  one  reason 
why.  And  I  look  older.  Oh,  yes,  I  do.  Thanks  just 
the  same.  There  are  too  many  women  in  England 
already — too  many  half-starving  shabby  genteel.  I 
earn  enough  to  live  on  here — that  is,  I  call  it  living. 
You  couldn't.  In  the  bad  season,  when  there  are 
no  tourists,  I  live  on  a  lire  a  day,  including  my 
rent." 

Henry  Gregg  stood  up. 

"My  land!  Why  don't  you  come  to  America?" 
He  waved  his  arms.  "America!" 

Mary  Gowd's  brick-red  cheeks  grew  redder. 

"America!"  she  echoed.  "When  I  see  American 
tourists  here  throwing  pennies  in  the  Fountain  of 
Trevi,  so  that  they'll  come  back  to  Rome,  I  want  to 
scream.  By  the  time  I  save  enough  money  to  go  to 
America  I'll  be  an  old  woman  and  it  will  be  too  late. 
And  if  I  did  contrive  to  scrape  together  enough  for 
my  passage  over  I  couldn't  go  to  the  United  States 
in  these  clothes.  I've  seen  thousands  of  American 
women  here.  If  they  look  like  that  when  they're  just 
travelling  about,  what  do  they  wear  at  home!" 

"Clothes?"  inquired  Henry  Gregg,  mystified. 
"What's  wrong  with  your  clothes?" 

"Everything!  I've  seen  them  look  at  my  suit,  which 
hunches  in  the  back  and  strains  across  the  front,  and 
is  shiny  at  the  seams.  And  my  gloves!  And  my  hat! 


THE  GUIDING  MISS  GOWD  271 

Well,  even  though  I  am  English  I  know  how  frightful 
my  hat  is." 

"You're  a  smart  woman,"  said  Henry  D.  Gregg. 

"Not  smart  enough,"  retorted  Mary  Gowd,  "or 
I  shouldn't  be  here." 

The  two  stood  up  as  Tweetie  came  toward  them 
from  the  lift.  Tweetie  pouted  again  at  sight  of  Mary 
Gowd,  but  the  pout  cleared  as  Blue  Cape,  his  arrange- 
ments completed,  stood  in  the  doorway,  splendid  hat 
in  hand. 

It  was  ten  o'clock  when  the  three  returned  from 
Tivoli  and  the  Colosseum — Mary  Gowd  silent  and 
shabbier  than  ever  from  the  dust  of  the  road;  Blue 
Cape  smiling;  Tweetie  frankly  pettish.  Pa  and  Ma 
Gregg  were  listening  to  the  after-dinner  concert  in  the 
foyer. 

"Was  it  romantic — the  Colosseum,  I  mean — by 
moonlight?"  asked  Ma  Gregg,  patting  Tweetie's 
cheek  and  trying  not  to  look  uncomfortable  as  Blue 
Cape  kissed  her  hand. 

' '  Romantic ! ' '  snapped  Tweetie.  ' '  It  was  as  romantic 
as  Main  Street  on  Circus  Day.  Hordes  of  people 
tramping  about  like  buffaloes.  Simply  swarming  with 
tourists — German  ones.  One  couldn't  find  a  single 
ruin  to  sit  on.  Romantic!"  She  glared  at  the 
silent  Mary  Gowd. 

There  was  a  strange  little  glint  in  Mary  Gowd's 
eyes,  and  the  grim  line  was  there  about  the  mouth 
again,  grimmer  than  it  had  been  in  the  morning. 


2 72  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

"You  will  excuse  me?"  she  said.  " I  am  very  tired. 
I  will  say  good  night." 

"And  I,"    announced  Caldini. 

Mary  Gowd  turned  swiftly  to  look  at  him. 

"You!"   said  Tweetie  Gregg. 

"I  trust  that  I  may  have  the  very  great  happiness 
to  see  you  in  the  morning,"  went  on  Caldini  in  his 
careful  English.  "I  cannot  permit  Signora  Gowd  to 
return  home  alone  through  the  streets  of  Rome."  He 
bowed  low  and  elaborately  over  the  hands  of  the  two 
women. 

"Oh,  well;  for  that  matter "  began  Henry 

Gregg  gallantly. 

Caldini  raised  a  protesting,  white-gloved  hand. 

"I  cannot  permit  it." 

He  bowed  again  and  looked  hard  at  Mary  Gowd. 
Mary  Gowd  returned  the  look.  The  brick-red  had 
quite  faded  from  her  cheeks.  Then,  with  a  nod,  she 
turned  and  walked  toward  the  door.  Blue  Cape, 
sword  clanking,  followed  her. 

In  silence  he  handed  her  into  the  fiacre.  In  silence 
he  seated  himself  beside  her.  Then  he  leaned  very 
close. 

"I  will  talk  in  this  damned  English,"  he  began, 
"that  the  pig  of  a  fiaccheraio  may  not  understand. 
This — this  Gregg,  he  is  very  rich,  like  all  Americans. 
And  the  little  Eleanora!  Bellissima!  You  must  not 
stand  in  my  way.  It  is  not  good."  Mary  Dowd  sat 
silent.  "You  will  help  me.  To-day  you  were  not  kind. 


THE  GUIDING  MISS  GOWD  273 

There  will  be  much  money — money  for  me;  also  for 
you." 

Fifteen  years  before — ten  years  before — she  would 
have  died  sooner  than  listen  to  a  plan  such  as  he 
proposed;  but  fifteen  years  of  Rome  blunts  one's 
English  sensibilities.  Fifteen  years  of  privation  dulls 
one's  moral  sense.  And  money  meant  America.  And 
little  Tweetie  Gregg  had  not  lowered  her  voice  or  her 
laugh  when  she  spoke  that  afternoon  of  Mary  Gowd's 
absurd  English  fringe  and  her  red  wrists  above  her  too- 
short  gloves. 

"How  much?"  asked  Mary  Gowd.  He  named  a 
figure.  She  laughed. 

"More — much  more!" 

He  named  another  figure;   then  another. 

"  You  will  put  it  down  on  paper,"  said  Mary  Gowd, 
"and  sign  your  name — to-morrow." 

They  drove  the  remainder  of  the  way  in  silence. 
At  her  door  in  the  Via  Babbuino : 

"You  mean  to  marry  her?"    asked  Mary  Gowd. 

Blue  Cape  shrugged  eloquent  shoulders: 

"I  think  not,"  he  said  quite  simply. 

It  was  to  be  the  Appian  Way  the  next  morning,  with  a 
stop  at  the  Catacombs.  Mary  Gowd  reached  the  hotel 
very  early,  but  not  so  early  as  Caldini. 

"Think  the  five  of  us  can  pile  into  one  carriage?" 
boomed  Henry  Gregg  cheerily. 

"A  little   crowded,   I   think,"   said   Mary   Gowd, 


274  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

"for  such  a  long  drive.  May  I  suggest  that  we  three" 
—she  smiled  on  Henry  Gregg  and  his  wife — "take 
this  larger  carriage,  while  Miss  Eleanora  and  Signor 
Caldini  follow  hi  the  single  cab?" 

A  lightning  message  from  Blue  Cape's  eyes. 

"Yes;  that  would  be  nice!"  cooed  Twee  tie. 

So  it  was  arranged.  Mary  Gowd  rather  outdid 
herself  as  a  guide  that  morning.  She  had  a  hundred 
little  intimate  tales  at  her  tongue's  end.  She  seemed 
fairly  to  people  those  old  ruins  again  with  the  men 
and  women  of  a  thousand  years  ago.  Even  Tweetie— 
little  frivolous,  indifferent  Tweetie — was  impressed  and 
interested. 

As  they  were  returning  to  the  carriages  after  inspect- 
ing the  Baths  of  Caracalla,  Tweetie  even  skipped 
ahead  and  slipped  her  hand  for  a  moment  into  Mary 
Gowd's. 

"You're  simply  wonderful!"  she  said  almost  shyly. 
"You  make  things  sound  so  real.  And — and  I'm 
sorry  I  was  so  nasty  to  you  yesterday  at  Tivoli." 

Mary  Dowd  looked  down  at  the  glowing  little  face. 
A  foolish  little  face  it  was,  but  very,  very  pretty,  and 
exquisitely  young  and  fresh  and  sweet.  Tweetie 
dropped  her  voice  to  a  whisper: 

"You  should  hear  him  pronounce  my  name.  It 
is  like  music  when  he  says  it — El-e-a-no-ra;  like  that. 
And  aren't  his  kid  gloves  always  beautifully  white? 
Why,  the  boys  back  home- 
Mary  Gowd  was  still  staring  down  at  her.  She 


THE  GUIDING  MISS  GOWD  275 

lifted  the  slim,  ringed  little  hand  which  lay  within 
her  white-cotton  paw  and  stared  at  that  too. 

Then  with  a  jerk  she  dropped  the  girl's  hand  and 
squared  her  shoulders  like  a  soldier,  so  that  the  dowdy 
blue  suit  strained  more  than  ever  at  its  seams;  and 
the  line  that  had  settled  about  her  mouth  the  night 
before  faded  slowly,  as  though  a  muscle  too  tightly 
drawn  had  relaxed. 

In  the  carriages  they  were  seated  as  before.  The 
horses  started  up,  with  the  smaller  cab  but  a  dozen 
paces  behind.  Mary  Gowd  leaned  forward.  She  began 
to  speak — her  voice  very  low,  her  accent  clearly 
English,  her  brevity  wonderfully  American. 

"Listen  to  me!"  she  said.  "You  must  leave  Rome 
to-night!" 

"Leave  Rome  to-night!"  echoed  the  Greggs  as 
though  rehearsing  a  duet. 

"Be  quiet!  You  must  not  shout  like  that.  I  say 
you  must  go  away." 

Mamma  Gregg  opened  her  lips  and  shut  them, 
wordless  for  once.  Henry  Gregg  laid  one  big  hand  on 
his  wife's  shaking  knees  and  eyed  Mary  Gowd  very 
quietly. 

"I  don't  get  you,"  he  said. 

Mary  Gowd  looked  straight  at  him  as  she  said  what 
she  had  to  say: 

"There  are  things  in  Rome  you  cannot  understand. 
You  could  not  understand  unless  you  lived  here  many 
years.  I  lived  here  many  months  before  I  learned 


276  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

to  step  meekly  off  into  the  gutter  to  allow  a  man  to 
pass  on  the  narrow  sidewalk.  You  must  take  your 
pretty  daughter  and  go  away.  To-night!  No — let 
me  finish.  I  will  tell  you  what  happened  to  me  fifteen 
years  ago,  and  I  will  tell  you  what  this  Caldini  has  in 
his  mind.  You  will  believe  me  and  forgive  me;  and 
promise  me  that  you  will  go  quietly  away." 

When  she  finished  Mrs.  Gregg  was  white-faced  and 
luckily  too  frightened  to  weep.  Henry  Gregg  started 
up  in  the  carriage,  his  fists  white-knuckled,  his  lean 
face  turned  toward  the  carriage  crawling  behind. 

"Sit  down!"  commanded  Mary  Gowd.  She  jerked 
his  sleeve.  "Sit  down!" 

Henry  Gregg  sat  down  slowly.  Then  he  wet  his 
lips  slightly  and  smiled. 

"Oh,  bosh!"  he  said.  "This— this  is  the  twentieth 
century  and  we're  Americans,  and  it's  broad  day- 
light. Why,  111  lick  the- 

"This  is  Rome,"  interrupted  Mary  Gowd  quietly, 
"and  you  will  do  nothing  of  the  kind,  because  he  would 
make  you  pay  for  that  too,  and  it  would  be  in  all  the 
papers;  and  your  pretty  daughter  would  hang  her 
head  in  shame  forever."  She  put  one  hand  on  Henry 
Gregg's  sleeve.  "You  do  not  know!  You  do  not! 
Promise  me  you  will  go."  The  tears  sprang  suddenly 
to  her  English  blue  eyes.  "Promise  me!  Promise  me!" 

"Henry!"  cried  Mamma  Gregg,  very  grey-faced. 
"Promise,  Henry!" 

"I  promise,"  said  Henry  Gregg,  and  he  turned  away. 


THE  GUIDING  MISS  GOWD  277 

Mary  Gowd  sank  back  in  her  seat  and  shut  her 
eyes  for  a  moment. 

"Presto!"  she  said  to  the  half-sleeping  driver.  Then 
she  waved  a  gay  hand  at  the  carriage  in  the  rear. 
"Presto!"  she  called,  smiling.  "Presto!" 

At  six  o'clock  Mary  Gowd  entered  the  little  room 
in  the  Via  Babbuino.  She  went  first  to  the  window, 
drew  the  heavy  curtains.  The  roar  of  Rome  was 
hushed  to  a  humming.  She  lighted  a  candle  that  stood 
on  the  table.  Its  dim  light  emphasized  the  gloom.  She 
took  off  the  battered  black  velvet  hat  and  sank  into 
the  chintz-covered  English  chair.  Tina  stood  in  the 
doorway.  Mary  Gowd  sat  up  with  a  jerk. 

"Letters,  Tina? " 

Tina  thought  deeply,  fumbled  at  the  bosom  of  her 
gown  and  drew  out  a  sealed  envelope  grudgingly. 

Mary  Gowd  broke  the  seal,  glanced  at  the  letter. 
Then,  under  Tina's  startled  gaze,  she  held  it  to  the 
flaming  candle  and  watched  it  burn. 

"What  is  it  that  you  do?"    demanded  Tina. 

Mary  Gowd  smiled. 

"You  have  heard  of  America?" 

"America!  A  thousand — a  million  time!  My 
brother  Luigi ' 

"Naturally!  This,  then"— Mary  Gowd  deliberately 
gathered  up  the  ashes  into  a  neat  pile  and  held  them 
in  her  hand,  a  crumpled  heap — "this  then,  Tina,  is 
my  trip  to  America." 


X 

SOPHY-AS-SHE-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN 

THE  key  to  the  heart  of  Paris  is  love.  He  whose 
key-ring  lacks  that  open  sesame  never  really  sees 
the  city,  even  though  he  dwell  in  the  shadow  of  the 
Sorbonne  and  comprehend  the  fiacre  French  of  the 
Paris  cabman.  Some  there  are  who  craftily  open  the 
door  with  a  skeleton  key;  some  who  ruthlessly  batter 
the  panels;  some  who  achieve  only  a  wax  impression, 
which  proves  to  be  useless.  There  are  many  who  travel 
no  farther  than  the  outer  gates.  You  will  find  them 
staring  blankly  at  the  stone  walls;  and  their  plaint  is: 
"What  do  they  find  to  rave  about  in  this  town?" 
Sophy  Gold  had  been  eight  days  in  Paris  and  she 
had  not  so  much  as  peeked  through  the  key-hole. 
In  a  vague  way  she  realised  that  she  was  seeing  Paris 
as  a  blind  man  sees  the  sun — feeling  its  warmth,  con- 
scious of  its  white  light  beating  on  the  eyeballs,  but 
never  actually  beholding  its  golden  glory. 

This  was  Sophy  Gold's  first  trip  to  Paris,  and  her 
heart  and  soul  and  business  brain  were  intent  on  buying 
the  shrewdest  possible  bill  of  lingerie  and  infants' 
wear  for  her  department  at  Schiff  Brothers',  Chicago; 
but  Sophy  under-estimated  the  powers  of  those  three 

278 


SOPHY-AS-SHE-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN  279 

guiding  parts.  While  heart,  soul,  and  brain  were  bent 
dutifully  and  indefatigably  on  the  lingerie  and  infants'- 
wear  job  they  also  were  registering  a  series  of  kaleido- 
scopic outside  impressions. 

As  she  drove  from  her  hotel  to  the  wholesale  district, 
and  from  the  wholesale  district  to  her  hotel,  there  had 
flashed  across  her  consciousness  the  picture  of  the  chic 
little  modistes'  models  and  ouvrieres  slipping  out  at 
noon  to  meet  their  lovers  on  the  corner,  to  sit  over 
their  sir  op  or  wine  at  some  little  near-by  cafe",  hands 
clasped,  eyes  glowing. 

Stepping  out  of  the  lift  to  ask  for  her  room  key, 
she  had  come  on  the  black-gowned  floor  clerk,  deep 
in  murmured  conversation  with  the  valet,  and  she  had 
seemed  not  to  see  Sophy  at  all  as  she  groped  subcon- 
sciously for  the  key  along  the  rows  of  keyboxes.  She 
had  seen  the  workmen  in  their'absurdly  baggy  corduroy 
trousers  and  grimy  shirts  strolling  along  arm  in  arm 
with  the  women  of  their  class — those  untidy  women 
with  the  tidy  hair.  Bareheaded  and  happy,  they 
strolled  along,  a  strange  contrast  to  the  glitter  of  the 
fashionable  boulevard,  stopping  now  and  then  to 
gaze  wide-eyed  at  a  million-franc  necklace  in  a  jeweller's 
window;  then  on  again  with  a  laugh  and  a  shrug  and 
a  caress.  She  had  seen  the  silent  couples  in  the  Tuileries 
Gardens  at  twilight. 

Once,  in  the  Bois  de  Boulogne,  a  slim,  sallow  elegant 
had  bent  for  what  seemed  an  interminable  time  over 
a  white  hand  that  was  stretched  from  the  window  of 


28o  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

a  motor  car.  He  was  standing  at  the  curb,  in  either 
greeting  or  parting,  and  his  eyes  were  fastened  on  other 
eyes  within  the  car  even  while  his  lips  pressed  the  white 
hand. 

Then  one  evening — Sophy  reddened  now  at  memory 
of  it — she  had  turned  a  quiet  corner  and  come  on  a  boy 
and  a  girl.  The  girl  was  shabby  and  sixteen;  the  boy 
pale,  voluble,  smiling. 

Evidently  they  were  just  parting.  Suddenly,  as 
she  passed,  the  boy  had  caught  the  girl  in  his  arms 
there  on  the  street  corner  in  the  daylight,  and  had 
kissed  her — not  the  quick,  resounding  smack  of  casual 
leave-taking,  but  a  long,  silent  kiss  that  left  the  girl 
limp. 

Sophy  stood  rooted  to  the  spot,  between  horror 
and  fascination.  The  boy's  arm  brought  the  girl 
upright  and  set  her  on  her  feet. 

She  took  a  long  breath,  straightened  her  hat,  and 
ran  on  to  rejoin  her  girl  friend  awaiting  her  calmly 
up  the  street.  She  was  not  even  flushed;  but  Sophy 
was.  Sophy  was  blushing  hotly  and  burning  uncom- 
fortably, so  that  her  eyes  smarted. 

Just  after  her  late  dinner  on  the  eighth  day  of  her 
Paris  stay,  Sophy  Gold  was  seated  in  the  hotel  lobby. 
Paris  thronged  with  American  business  buyers — those 
clever,  capable,  shrewd-eyed  women  who  swarm  on 
the  city  in  June  and  strip  it  of  its  choicest  flowers, 
from  ball  gowns  to  back  combs.  Sophy  tried  to  pick 
them  from  the  multitude  that  swept  past  her.  It  was 


SOPHY-AS-SHE-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN  281 

not  difficult.  The  women  visitors  to  Paris  in  June 
drop  easily  into  their  proper  slots. 

There  were  the  pretty  American  girls  and  their 
marvellously  young-looking  mammas,  both  out-French- 
ing  the  French  in  their  efforts  to  look  Parisian;  there 
were  rows  of  fat,  placid,  jewel-laden  Argentine  mothers, 
each  with  a  watchful  eye  on  her  black-eyed,  volcanically 
calm,  be-powdered  daughter;  and  there  were  the 
buyers,  miraculously  dressy  in  next  week's  styles  in 
suits  and  hats — of  the  old-girl  type  most  of  them, 
alert,  self-confident,  capable. 

They  usually  returned  to  their  hotels  at  six,  limping 
a  little,  dog-tired;  but  at  sight  of  the  brightly  lighted, 
gay  hotel  foyer  they  would  straighten  up  like  war- 
horses  scenting  battle  and  achieve  an  effective  entrance 
from  the  doorway  to  the  lift. 

In  all  that  big,  busy  foyer  Sophy  Gold  herself  was 
the  one  person  distinctly  out  of  the  picture.  One  did 
not  know  where  to  place  her.  To  begin  with,  a  woman 
as  irrevocably,  irredeemably  ugly  as  Sophy  was  an 
anachronism  in  Paris.  She  belonged  to  the  gargoyle 
period.  You  found  yourself  speculating  on  whether  it 
was  her  mouth  or  her  nose  that  made  her  so  devas- 
tatingly  plain,  only  to  bring  up  at  her  eyes  and  find 
that  they  alone  were  enough  to  wreck  any  ambitions 
toward  beauty.  You  knew  before  you  saw  it  that  her 
hair  would  be  limp  and  straggling. 

You  sensed  without  a  glance  at  them  that  her  hands 
would  be  bony,  with  unlovely  knuckles. 


282  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

The  Fates,  grinning,  had  done  all  that.  Her  Chicago 
tailor  and  milliner  had  completed  the  work.  Sophy 
had  not  been  in  Paris  ten  minutes  before  she  noticed 
that  they  were  wearing  'em  long  and  full.  Her  coat 
was  short  and  her  skirt  scant.  Her  hat  was  small. 
The  Paris  windows  were  full  of  large  and  graceful 
black  velvets  of  the  Lillian  Russell  school. 

"May  I  sit  here?" 

Sophy  looked  up  into  the  plump,  pink,  smiling  face 
of  one  of  those  very  women  of  the  buyer  type  on  whom 
she  had  speculated  ten  minutes  before — a  good- 
natured  face  with  shrewd,  twinkling  eyes.  At  sight 
of  it  you  forgave  her  her  skittish  white-kid-topped  shoes. 

"Certainly,"  smiled  Sophy,  and  moved  over  a  bit 
on  the  little  French  settee. 

The  plump  woman  sat  down  heavily.  In  five  minutes 
Sophy  was  conscious  she  was  being  stared  at  surrep- 
titiously. In  ten  minutes  she  was  uncomfortably 
conscious  of  it.  In  eleven  minutes  she  turned  her  head 
suddenly  and  caught  the  stout  woman's  eyes  fixed  on 
her,  with  just  the  baffled,  speculative  expression  she 
had  expected  to  find  in  them.  Sophy  Gold  had  caught 
that  look  in  many  women's  eyes.  She  smiled  grimly 
now. 

"Don't  try  it,"  she  said.   "It's  no  use." 

The  pink,  plump  face  flushed  pinker. 

"Don't  try " 

"Don't  try  to  convince  yourself  that  if  I  wore  my 
hair  differently,  or  my  collar  tighter,  or  my  hat  larger, 


SOPHY-AS-SHE-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN  283 

it  would  make  a  difference  in  my  looks.  It  wouldn't. 
It's  hard  to  believe  that  I'm  as  homely  as  I  look,  but 
I  am.  I've  watched  women  try  to  dress  me  in  as  many 
as  eleven  mental  changes  of  costume  before  they  gave 
me  up." 

"But  I  didn't  mean — I  beg  your  pardon — you 
mustn't  think " 

"Oh,  that's  all  right!  I  used  to  struggle,  but  I'm 
used  to  it  now.  It  took  me  a  long  time  to  realise  that 
this  was  my  real  face  and  the  only  kind  I  could  ever 
expect  to  have." 

The  plump  woman's  kindly  face  grew  kinder. 

"But  you're  really  not  so ' 

"Oh,  yes,  I  am.  Upholstering  can't  change  me. 
There  are  various  kinds  of  homely  women — some 
who  are  hideous  in  blue  maybe,  but  who  soften  up  in 
pink.  Then  there's  the  one  you  read  about,  whose 
features  are  lighted  up  now  and  then  by  one  of  those 
rare,  sweet  smiles  that  make  her  plain  face  almost 
beautiful.  But  once  in  a  while  you  find  a  woman  who 
is  ugly  in  any  colour  of  the  rainbow;  who  is  ugly  smiling 
or  serious,  talking  or  in  repose,  hair  down  low  or  hair 
done  high — just  plain  dyed-in-the-wool,  sewed-in-the- 
seam  homely.  I'm  that  kind.  Here  for  a  visit?" 

"I'm  a  buyer,"  said  the  plump  woman. 

"Yes;  I  thought  so.  I'm  the  lingerie  and  infants'- 
wear  buyer  for  Schiff,  Chicago." 

"A  buyer!"  The  plump  woman's  eyes  jumped  un- 
controllably again  to  Sophy  Gold's  scrambled  features. 


284  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

"Well!  My  name's  Miss  Morrissey — Ella  Morrissey. 
Millinery  for  Abelman's,  Pittsburgh.  And  it's  no  snap 
this  year,  with  the  shops  showing  postage-stamp  hats 
one  day  and  cart-wheels  the  next.  I  said  this  morning 
that  I  envied  the  head  of  the  tinware  department. 
Been  over  often?" 

Sophy  made  the  shamefaced  confession  of  the  novice: 
"My  first  trip." 

The  inevitable  answer  came: 

1  i  Your  first !  Really !  This  is  my  twentieth  crossing. 
Been  coming  over  twice  a  year  for  ten  years.  If  there's 
anything  I  can  tell  you,  just  ask.  The  first  buying  trip 
to  Paris  is  hard  until  you  know  the  ropes.  Of  course 
you  love  this  town?" 

Sophy  Gold  sat  silent  a  moment,  hesitating.  Then 
she  turned  a  puzzled  face  toward  Miss  Morrissey. 

"What  do  people  mean  when  they  say  they  love 
Paris?" 

Ella  Morrissey  stared.  Then  a  queer  look  came  into 
her  face — a  pitying  sort  of  look.  The  shrewd  eyes 
softened.  She  groped  for  words. 

"When  I  first  came  over  here,  ten  years  ago,  I — 
well,  it  would  have  been  easier  to  tell  you  then.  I 
don't  know — there's  something  about  Paris — something 
in  the  atmosphere — something  in  the  air.  It — it 
makes  you  do  foolish  things.  It  makes  you  feel  queer 
and  light  and  happy.  It's  nothing  you  can  put  your 
finger  on  and  say  That's  it!'  But  it's  there." 

"Huh!"  grunted  Sophy  Gold.    "I  suppose  I  could 


SOPHY-AS-SHE-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN  285 

save  myself  a  lot  of  trouble  by  saying  that  I  feel  it; 
but  I  don't.  I  simply  don't  react  to  this  town.  The 
only  things  I  really  like  in  Paris  are  the  Tomb  of 
Napoleon,  the  Seine  at  night,  and  the  strawberry  tart 
you  get  at  Vian's.  Of  course  the  parks  and  boulevards 
are  a  marvel,  but  you  can't  expect  me  to  love  a  town 
for  that.  I'm  no  landscape  gardener." 

That  pitying  look  deepened  in  Miss  Morrissey's  eyes. 

"Have  you  been  out  in  the  evening?  The  res- 
taurants! The  French  women!  The  life!" 

Sophy  Gold  caught  the  pitying  look  and  interpreted 
it  without  resentment;  but  there  was  perhaps  an  added 
acid  in  her  tone  when  she  spoke. 

"I'm  here  to  buy — not  to  play.  I'm  thirty  years  old, 
and  it's  taken  me  ten  years  to  work  my  way  up  to 
foreign  buyer.  I've  worked.  And  I  wasn't  handi- 
capped any  by  my  beauty.  I've  made  up  my  mind 
that  I'm  going  to  buy  the  smoothest-moving  line  of 
French  lingerie  and  infants'  wear  that  Schiff  Brothers 
ever  had." 

Miss  Morrissey  checked  her. 

"But,  my  dear  girl,  haven't  you  been  round  at  all?" 

"Oh,  a  little;  as  much  as  a  woman  can  go  round 
alone  in  Paris — even  a  homely  woman.  But  I've  been 
disappointed  every  time.  The  noise  drives  me  wild, 
to  begin  with.  Not  that  I'm  not  used  to  noise.  I  am. 
I  can  stand  for  a  town  that  roars,  like  Chicago.  But 
this  city  yelps.  I've  been  going  round  to  the  restaurants 
a  little.  At  noon  I  always  picked  the  restaurant  I 


286  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

wanted,  so  long  as  I  had  to  pay  for  the  lunch  of  the 
commissionnaire  who  was  with  me  anyway.  Can  you 
imagine  any  man  at  home  letting  a  woman  pay  for  his 
meals  the  way  those  shrimpy  Frenchmen  do? 

"Well,  the  restaurants  were  always  jammed  full  of 
Americans.  The  men  of  the  party  would  look  over 
the  French  menu  in  a  helpless  sort  of  way,  and  then 
they'd  say :  ' What  do  you  say  to  a  nice  big  steak  with 
French-fried  potatoes?7  The  waiter  would  give  them 
a  disgusted  look  and  put  in  the  order.  They  might 
just  as  well  have  been  eating  at  a  quick  lunch  place. 
As  for  the  French  women,  every  time  I  picked  what  I 
took  to  be  a  real  Parisienne  coming  toward  me  I'd 
hear  her  say  as  she  passed:  'Henry,  I'm  going  over 
to  the  Galerie  Lafayette.  I'll  meet  you  at  the  American 
Express  at  twelve.  And,  Henry,  I  think  I'll  need 
some  more  money.'  ' 

Miss  Ella  Morrissey's  twinkling  eyes  almost  dis- 
appeared in  wrinkles  of  laughter;  but  Sophy  Gold  was 
not  laughing.  As  she  talked  she  gazed  grimly  ahead  at 
the  throng  that  shifted  and  glittered  and  laughed  and 
chattered  all  about  her. 

"I  stopped  work  early  one  afternoon  and  went  over 
across  the  river.  Well!  They  may  be  artistic,  but 
they  all  looked  as  though  they  needed  a  shave  and  a 
hair-cut  and  a  square  meal.  And  the  girls!" 

Ella  Morrissey  raised  a  plump,  protesting  palm. 

"Now  look  here,  child,  Paris  isn't  so  much  a  city  as 
a  state  of  mind.  To  enjoy  it  you've  got  to  forget 


SOPHY-AS-SHE-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN  287 

you're  an  American.  Don't  look  at  it  from  a  Chicago, 
Illinois,  viewpoint.  Just  try  to  imagine  you're  a 
mixture  of  Montmartre  girl,  Latin  Quarter  model 
and  duchess  from  the  Champs  filysees.  Then  you'll 
get  it." 

" Get  it!"  retorted  Sophy  Gold.  "If  I  could  do  that 
I  wouldn't  be  buying  lingerie  and  infants'  wear  for 
SchirTs'.  I'd  be  crowding  Duse  and  Bernhardt  and 
Mrs.  Fiske  off  the  boards." 

Miss  Morrissey  sat  silent  and  thoughtful,  rubbing 
one  fat  forefinger  slowly  up  and  down  her  knee.  Sud- 
denly she  turned. 

"Don't  be  angry — but  have  you  ever  been  in  love?" 

"Look  at  me!"  replied  Sophy  Gold  simply.  Miss 
Morrissey  reddened  a  little.  "As  head  of  the  lingerie 
section  I've  selected  trousseaus  for  I  don't  know  how 
many  Chicago  brides;  but  I'll  never  have  to  decide 
whether  I'll  have  pink  or  blue  ribbons  for  my  own." 

With  a  little  impulsive  gesture  Ella  Morrissey  laid 
one  hand  on  the  shoulder  of  her  new  acquaintance. 

"Come  on  up  and  visit  me,  will  you?  I  made  them 
give  me  an  inside  room,  away  from  the  noise.  Too 
many  people  down  here.  Besides,  I'd  like  to  take  off 
this  armour-plate  of  mine  and  get  comfortable.  When 
a  girl  gets  as  old  and  fat  as  I  am " 

"There  are  some  letters  I  ought  to  get  out,"  Sophy 
Gold  protested  feebly. 

"Yes;  I  know.  We  all  have;  but  there's  such  a 
thing  as  overdoing  this  duty  to  the  firm.  You  get 


288  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

up  at  six  to-morrow  morning  and  slap  off  those  letters. 
They'll  come  easier  and  sound  less  tired." 

They  made  for  the  lift;  but  at  its  very  gates: 

"Hello,  little  girl!"  cried  a  masculine  voice;  and  a 
detaining  hand  was  laid  on  Ella  Morrissey's  plump 
shoulder. 

That  lady  recognised  the  voice  and  the  greeting 
before  she  turned  to  face  their  source.  Max  Tack, 
junior  partner  hi  the  firm  of  Tack  Brothers,  Lingerie 
and  Infants'  Wear,  New  York,  held  out  an  eager  hand. 

"Hello,  Max!"  said  Miss  Morrissey  not  too  cordially. 
"My,  aren't  you  dressy!" 

He  was  undeniably  dressy — not  that  only,  but  ra- 
diant with  the  self-confidence  born  of  good  looks,  of 
well-fitting  evening  clothes,  of  a  fresh  shave,  of  glis- 
tening nails.  Max  Tack,  of  the  hard  eye  and  the  soft 
smile,  of  the  slim  figure  and  the  semi-bald  head,  of 
the  flattering  tongue  and  the  business  brain,  bent  his 
attention  full  on  the  very  plain  Miss  Sophy  Gold. 

"Aren't  you  going  to  introduce  me?"  he  demanded. 

Miss  Morrissey  introduced  them,  buyer  fashion- 
names,  business  connection,  and  firms. 

"I  knew  you  were  Miss  Gold,"  began  Max  Tack, 
the  honey- tongued.  "Some  one  pointed  you  out  to 
me  yesterday.  I've  been  trying  to  meet  you  ever  since." 

"I  hope  you  haven't  neglected  your  business,"  said 
Miss  Gold  without  enthusiasm. 

Max  Tack  leaned  closer,  his  tone  lowered. 

"I'd  neglect  it  any  day  for  you.    Listen,  little  one: 


SOPHY-AS-SHE-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN  289 

aren't  you  going  to  take  dinner  with  me  some  eve- 
ning?" 

Max  Tack  always  called  a  woman  "Little  one." 
It  was  part  of  his  business  formula.  He  was  only  one 
of  the  wholesalers  who  go  to  Paris  yearly  ostensibly 
to  buy  models,  but  really  to  pay  heavy  diplomatic 
court  to  those  hundreds  of  women  buyers  who  flock 
to  that  city  in  the  interests  of  their  firms.  To  enter- 
tain those  buyers  who  were  interested  in  goods  such 
as  he  manufactured  in  America;  to  win  their  friend- 
ship; to  make  them  feel  under  obligation  at  least  to 
inspect  his  line  when  they  came  to  New  York — that 
was  Max  Tack's  mission  in  Paris.  He  performed  it 
admirably. 

"What  evening?"  he  said  now.  "How  about  to- 
morrow?" Sophy  Gold  shook  her  head.  "Wednesday 
then?  You  stick  to  me  and  you'll  see  Paris.  Thurs- 
day?" 

"I'm  buying  my  own  dinners,"  said  Sophy  Gold. 

Max  Tack  wagged  a  chiding  forefinger  at  her. 

"You  little  rascal!"  No  one  had  ever  called  Sophy 
Gold  a  little  rascal  before.  "You  stingy  little  rascal! 
Won't  give  a  poor  lonesome  fellow  an  evening's  pleas- 
ure, eh!  The  theatre?  Want  to  go  slumming?" 

He  was  feeling  his  way  now,  a  trifle  puzzled.  Usually 
he  landed  a  buyer  at  the  first  shot.  Of  course  you  had 
to  use  tact  and  discrimination.  Some  you  took  to 
supper  and  to  the  naughty  revues. 

Occasionally  you  found  a  highbrow  one  who  pre- 


29o  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

ferred  the  opera.  Had  he  not  sat  through  Parsifal 
the  week  before?  And  nearly  died!  Some  wanted  to 
begin  at  Tod  Sloan's  bar  and  work  their  way  up  through 
Montmartre,  ending  with  breakfast  at  the  Pre  Catalan. 
Those  were  the  greedy  ones.  But  this  one! 

"What's  she  staUing  for— with  that  face?"  he  asked 
himself. 

Sophy  Gold  was  moving  toward  the  lift,  the  twin- 
kling-eyed Miss  Morrissey  with  her. 

"  I'm  working  too  hard  to  play.  Thanks,  just  the  same. 
Good-night." 

Max  Tack,  his  face  blank,  stood  staring  up  at  them 
as  the  lift  began  to  ascend. 

"Trasy&n"  said  Miss  Morrissey  grandly  to  the 
lift  man. 

"Third,"  replied  that  linguistic  person,  unimpressed. 

It  turned  out  to  be  soothingly  quiet  and  cool  in 
Ella  Morrissey's  room.  She  flicked  on  the  light  and 
turned  an  admiring  glance  on  Sophy  Gold. 

"Is  that  your  usual  method?" 

"I  haven't  any  method,"  Miss  Gold  seated  herself 
by  the  window.  "But  I've  worked  too  hard  for  this 
job  of  mine  to  risk  it  by  putting  myself  under  obliga- 
tions to  any  New  York  firm.  It  simply  means  that 
you've  got  to  buy  their  goods.  It  isn't  fair  to  your 
firm." 

Miss  Morrissey  was  busy  with  hooks  and  eyes 
and  strings.  Her  utterance  was  jerky  but  concise. 
At  one  stage  of  her  disrobing  she  breathed  a  great 


SOPHY-AS-SHE-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN  291 

sigh  of  relief  as  she  flung  a  heavy  garment  from 
her. 

" There!  That's  comfort!  Nights  like  this  I  wish  I 
had  that  back  porch  of  our  flat  to  sit  on  for  just  an 
hour.  Ma  has  flower  boxes  all  round  it,  and  I  bought 
one  of  those  hammock  couches  last  year.  When  I 
come  home  from  the  store  summer  evenings  I  peel 
and  get  into  my  old  blue-and-white  kimono  and  lie 
there,  listening  to  the  girl  stirring  j:he  iced  tea  for 
supper,  and  knowing  that  Ma  has  a  platter  of  her 
swell  cold  fish  with  egg  sauce !"  She  relaxed  into  an 
armchair,  "Tell  me,  do  you  always  talk  to  men  that 
way?" 

Sophy  Gold  was  still  staring  out  the  open  window. 

"They  don't  bother  me  much,  as  a  rule." 

"Max  Tack  isn't  a  bad  boy.  He  never  wastes  much 
time  on  me.  I  don't  buy  his  line.  Max  is  all  business. 
Of  course  he's  something  of  a  smarty,  and  he  does 
think  he's  the  first  verse  and  chorus  of  Paris-by-night; 
but  you  can't  help  liking  him." 

"Well,  I  can,"  said  Sophy  Gold,  and  her  voice  was 
a  little  bitter,  "and  without  half  trying." 

"Oh,  I  don't  say  you  weren't  right.  I've  always 
made  it  a  rule  to  steer  clear  of  the  ax-grinders  myself. 
There  are  plenty  of  girls  who  take  everything  they  can 
get.  I  know  that  Max  Tack  is  just  padded  with  letters 
from  old  girls,  beginning  'Dear  Kid,'  and  ending, 
'Yours  with  a  world  of  love!'  I  don't  believe  in  that 
kind  of  thing,  or  in  accepting  things.  Julia  Harris, 


292  CHEERFUL—BY  REQUEST 

who  buys  for  three  departments  in  our  store,  drives 
up  every  morning  in  the  French  car  that  Parmentier's 
gave  her  when  she  was  here  last  year.  That's  bad  prin- 
ciple and  poor  taste.  But Well,  you're  young; 

and  there  ought  to  be  something  besides  business  in 
your  life." 

Sophy  Gold  turned  her  face  from  the  window  toward 
Miss  Morrissey.  It  served  to  put  a  stamp  of  finality 
on  what  she  said: 

"  There  never  will  be.  I  don't  know  anything  but 
business.  It's  the  only  thing  I  care  about.  I'll  be 
earning  my  ten  thousand  a  year  pretty  soon." 

"Ten  thousand  a  year  is  a  lot;  but  it  isn't  every- 
thing. Oh,  no,  it  isn't.  Look  here,  dear;  nobody 
knows  better  than  I  how  this  working  and  being  inde- 
pendent and  earning  your  own  good  money  puts  the 
stopper  on  any  sentiment  a  girl  might  have  in  her; 
but  don't  let  it  sour  you.  You  lose  your  illusions  soon 
enough,  goodness  knows!  There's  no  use  in  smashing 
'em  out  of  pure  meanness." 

"I  don't  see  what  illusions  have  got  to  do  with  Max 
Tack,"  interrupted  Sophy  Gold. 

Miss  Morrissey  laughed  her  fat,  comfortable  chuckle. 

"I  suppose  you're  right,  and  I  guess  I've  been  getting 
a  lee-tie  bit  nosey;  but  I'm  pretty  nearly  old  enough 
to  be  your  mother.  The  girls  kind  of  come  to  me  and 
I  talk  to  'em.  I  guess  they've  spoiled  me.  They " 

There  came  a  smart  rapping  at  the  door,  followed  by 
certain  giggling  and  swishing.  Miss  Morrissey  smiled. 


SOPHY-AS-SHE-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN          293 

"That'll  be  some  of  'em  now.  Just  run  and  open 
the  door,  will  you,  like  a  nice  little  thing?  I'm  too 
beat  out  to  move. 

The  swishing  swelled  to  a  mighty  rustle  as  the  door 
opened.  Taffeta  was  good  this  year,  and  the  three 
who  entered  were  the  last  in  the  world  to  leave  you  in 
ignorance  of  that  fact.  Ella  Morrissey  presented  her 
new  friend  to  the  three,  giving  the  department  each 
represented  as  one  would  mention  a  title  or  order. 

"The  little  plump  one  in  black? — Ladies'  and  Misses' 
Ready-to-wear,  Gates  Company,  Portland.  .  .  .  That's 
a  pretty  hat,  Carrie.  Get  it  to-day?  Give  me  a  big 
black  velvet  every  time.  You  can  wear  'em  with  any- 
thing, and  yet  they're  dressy  too.  Just  now  small 
hats  are  distinctly  passy. 

"The  handsome  one  who's  dressed  the  way  you  al- 
ways imagined  the  Parisiennes  would  dress,  but  don't? 
—Fancy  Goods,  Stein  &  Stack,  San  Francisco.  Listen, 
Fan:  don't  go  back  to  San  Francisco  with  that  stuff 
on  your  lips.  It's  all  right  in  Paris,  where  all  the  women 
do  it;  but  you  know  as  well  as  I  do  that  Morry  Stein 
would  take  one  look  at  you  and  then  tell  you  to  go 
upstairs  and  wash  your  face.  Well,  I'm  just  telling 
you  as  a  friend. 

"That  little  trick  is  the  biggest  lace  buyer  in  the 
country.  .  .  .  No,  you  wouldn't,  would  you?  Such  a 
mite!  Even  if  she  does  wear  a  twenty-eight  blouse 
she's  got  a  forty-two  brain — haven't  you,  Belle?  You 
didn't  make  a  mistake  with  that  blue  cr£pe  de  chine, 


294  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

child.  It's  chic  and  yet  it's  girlish.  And  you  can  wear 
it  on  the  floor,  too,  when  you  get  home.  It's  quiet 
if  it  is  stunning." 

These  five,  as  they  sat  there  that  June  evening, 
knew  what  your  wife  and  your  sister  and  your  mother 
would  wear  on  Fifth  Avenue  or  Michigan  Avenue 
next  October.  On  their  shrewd,  unerring  judgment 
rested  the  success  or  failure  of  many  hundreds  of  femi- 
nine garments.  The  lace  for  Miss  Minnesota's  lingerie; 
the  jewelled  comb  in  Miss  Colorado's  hair;  the  hat  that 
would  grace  Miss  New  Hampshire;  the  dress  for 
Madam  Delaware — all  were  the  results  of  their  far- 
sighted  selection.  They  were  foragers  of  feminine 
fal-lals,  and  their  booty  would  be  distributed  from 
oyster  cove  to  orange  grove. 

They  were  marcelled  and  manicured  within  an  inch 
of  their  lives.  They  rustled  and  a  pleasant  perfume 
clung  about  them.  Their  hats  were  so  smart  that  they 
gave  you  a  shock.  Their  shoes  were  correct.  Their 
skirts  bunched  where  skirts  should  bunch  that  year 
or  lay  smooth  where  smoothness  was  decreed.  They 
looked  like  the  essence  of  frivolity — until  you  saw 
their  eyes;  and  then  you  noticed  that  that  which  is 
liquid  in  sheltered  women's  eyes  was  crystallised  in 
theirs. 

Sophy  Gold,  listening  to  them,  felt  strangely  out  of 
it  and  plainer  than  ever. 

"I'm  taking  tango  lessons,  Ella,"  chirped  Miss 
Laces.  "Every  time  I  went  to  New  York  last  year  I 


SOPHY-AS-SHE-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN  295 

sat  and  twiddled  my  thumbs  while  every  one  else  was 
dancing.  I've  made  up  my  mind  I'll  be  in  it  this 
year." 

"You  girls  are  wonders!"  Miss  Morrissey  marvelled. 
"I  can't  do  it  any  more.  If  I  was  to  work  as  hard  as 
I  have  to  during  the  day  and  then  run  round  the  way 
you  do  in  the  evening  they'd  have  to  hold  services  for 
me  at  sea.  I'm  getting  old." 

"You— old!"  This  from  Miss  Ready-to- Wear. 
"You're  younger  now  than  I'll  ever  be.  Oh,  Ella,  I 
got  six  stunning  models  at  Estelle  Mornet's.  There's 
a  business  woman  for  you !  Her  place  is  smart  from  the 
ground  floor  up — not  like  the  shabby  old  junk  shops 
the  others  have.  And  she  greets  you  herself.  The 
personal  touch !  Let  me  tell  you,  it  counts  in  business !" 

"I'd  go  slow  on  those  cape  blouses  if  I  were  you; 
I  don't  think  they're  going  to  take  at  home.  They 
look  like  regular  Third  Avenue  style  to  me." 

"Don't  worry.    I've  hardly  touched  them." 

They  talked  very  directly,  like  men,  when  they 
discussed  clothes;  for  to  them  a  clothes  talk  meant  a 
business  talk. 

The  telephone  buzzed.   The  three  sprang  up,  rustling. 

"That'll  be  for  us,  Ella,"  said  Miss  Fancy  Goods. 
"We  told  the  office  to  call  us  here.  The  boys  are 
probably  downstairs."  She  answered  the  call,  turned, 
nodded,  smoothed  her  gloves  and  preened  her  laces. 

Ella  Morrissey,  in  kimonoed  comfort,  waved  a  good- 
bye from  her  armchair.  "Have  a  good  time!  You  all 


296  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

look  lovely.    Oh,  we  met  Max  Tack  downstairs,  looking 
like  a  grand  duke!" 

Pert  Miss  Laces  turned  at  the  door,  giggling. 

"He  says  the  French  aristocracy  has  nothing  on 
him,  because  his  grandfather  was  one  of  the  original 
Ten  Ikes  of  New  York." 

A  final  crescendo  of  laughter,  a  last  swishing  of  silks, 
a  breath  of  perfume  from  the  doorway  and  they  were 
gone. 

Within  the  room  the  two  women  sat  looking  at  the 
closed  door  for  a  moment.  Then  Ella  Morrissey 
turned  to  look  at  Sophy  Gold  just  as  Sophy  Gold 
turned  to  look  at  Ella  Morrissey. 

"Well?"  smiled  Ella. 

Sophy  Gold  smiled  too — a  mirthless,  one-sided  smile. 

"I  felt  just  like  this  once  when  I  was  a  little  girl.  I 
went  to  a  party,  and  all  the  other  little  girls  had  yellow 
curls.  Maybe  some  of  them  had  brown  ones;  but  I 
only  remember  a  maze  of  golden  hair,  and  pink  and  blue 
sashes,  and  rosy  cheeks,  and  ardent  little  boys,  and  the 
sureness  of  those  little  girls — their  absolute  faith  in 
their  power  to  enthrall,  and  in  the  perfection  of  their 
curls  and  sashes.  I  went  home  before  the  ice  cream. 
And  I  love  ice  cream!" 

Ella  Morrissey's  eyes  narrowed  thoughtfully. 

"Then  the  next  time  you're  invited  to  a  party  you 
wait  for  the  ice  cream,  girlie." 

"Maybe  I  will,"  said  Sophy  Gold. 

The  party  came  two  nights  later.    It  was  such  a 


SOPHY-AS-SHE-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN  297 

very  modest  affair  that  one  would  hardly  call  it  that — 
least  of  all  Max  Tack,  who  had  spent  seventy-five 
dollars  the  night  before  in  entertaining  an  important 
prospective  buyer. 

On  her  way  to  her  room  that  sultry  June  night  Sophy 
had  encountered  the  persistent  Tack.  Ella  Morrissey, 
up  in  her  room,  was  fathoms  deep  in  work.  It  was 
barely  eight  o'clock  and  there  was  a  wonderful  opal 
sky — a  June  twilight  sky,  of  which  Paris  makes  a 
specialty — all  grey  and  rose  and  mauve  and  faint 
orange. 

"Somebody's  looking  mighty  sweet  to-night  in  her 
new  Paris  duds!" 

Max  Tack's  method  of  approach  never  varied  in 
its  simplicity. 

"They're  not  Paris— they're  Chicago." 

His  soul  was  in  his  eyes. 

"They  certainly  don't  look  it!"  Then,  with  a  little 
hurt  look  in  those  same  expressive  features:  "I 
suppose,  after  the  way  you  threw  me  down  hard  the 
other  night,  you  wouldn't  come  out  and  play  some- 
where, would  you — if  I  sat  up  and  begged  and  jumped 
through  this?" 

"It's  too  warm  for  most  things,"  Sophy  faltered. 

"Anywhere  your  little  heart  dictates,"  interrupted 
Max  Tack  ardently.  "Just  name  it." 

Sophy  looked  up. 

"Well,  then,  I'd  like  to  take  one  of  those  boats  and 
go  down  the  river  to  St.-Cloud.  The  station's  just 


298  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

back  of  the  Louvre.  We've  just  time  to  catch  the 
eight-fifteen  boat." 

"  Boat !"  echoed  Max  Tackstupidly.  Then,  in  revolt : 
"  Why,  say,  girlie,  you  don't  want  to  do  that!  What  is 
there  in  taking  an  old  tub  and  flopping  down  that 
dinky  stream?  Tell  you  what  we'll  do:  we'll " 

"No,  thanks,"  said  Sophy.  "And  it  really  doesn't 
matter.  You  simply  asked  me  what  I'd  like  to  do  and 
I  told  you.  Thanks.  Good-night." 

"Now,  now!"  pleaded  Max  Tack  in  a  panic.  "Of 
course  we'll  go.  I  just  thought  you'd  rather  do  some- 
thing fussier — that's  all.  I've  never  gone  down  the 
river;  but  I  think  that's  a  classy  little  idea — yes,  I  do. 
Now  you  run  and  get  your  hat  and  we'll  jump  into  a 
taxi  and " 

"You  don't  need  to  jump  into  a  taxi;  it's  only  two 
blocks.  We'll  walk."  ' 

There  was  a  little  crowd  down  at  the  landing  station. 
Max  Tack  noticed,  with  immense  relief,  that  they  were 
not  half-bad-looking  people  either.  He  had  been 
rather  afraid  of  workmen  in  red  sashes  and  with  lime 
on  their  clothes,  especially  after  Sophy  had  told  him 
that  a  trip  cost  twenty  centimes  each. 

' l  Twenty  centimes !  That's  about  four  cents !  Well, 
my  gad!" 

They  got  seats  in  the  prow.  Sophy  took  off  her  hat 
and  turned  her  face  gratefully  to  the  cool  breeze  as 
they  swung  out  into  the  river.  The  Paris  of  the  rum- 
bling, roaring  auto  buses,  and  the  honking  horns,  and  the 


SOPHY-AS-SHE-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN  299 

shrill  cries,  and  the  mad  confusion  faded  away.  There 
was  the  palely  glowing  sky  ahead,  and  on  each  side  the 
black  reflection  of  the  tree-laden  banks,  mistily  mys- 
terious now  and  very  lovely.  There  was  not  a  ripple 
on  the  water  and  the  Pont  Alexandre  III  and  the  golden 
glory  of  the  dome  of  the  Hotel  des  Invalides  were  ahead. 

"Say,  this  is  Venice!"  exclaimed  Max  Tack. 

A  soft  and  magic  light  covered  the  shore,  the  river, 
the  sky,  and  a  soft  and  magic  something  seemed  to 
steal  over  the  little  boat  and  work  its  wonders. 
The  shabby  student-looking  chap  and  his  equally  shabby 
and  merry  little  companion,  both  Americans,  closed 
the  bag  of  fruit  from  which  they  had  been  munching 
and  sat  looking  into  each  other's  eyes. 

The  long-haired  artist,  who  looked  miraculously  like 
pictures  of  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  smiled  down  at 
his  queer,  slender-legged  little  daughter  in  the  curious 
Cubist  frock;  and  she  smiled  back  and  snuggled  up 
and  rested  her  cheek  on  his  arm.  There  seemed  to 
be  a  deep  and  silent  understanding  between  them. 
You  knew,  somehow,  that  the  little  Cubist  daughter 
had  no  mother,  and  that  the  father's  artist  friends 
made  much  of  her  and  that  she  poured  tea  for  them 
prettily  on  special  days. 

The  bepowdered  French  girl  who  got  on  at  the  second 
station  sat  frankly  and  contentedly  in  the  embrace 
of  her  sweetheart.  The  stolid  married  couple  across 
the  way  smiled  and  the  man's  arm  rested  on  his  wife's 
plump  shoulder. 


300  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

So  the  love  boat  glided  down  the  river  into  the  night. 
And  the  shore  faded  and  became  grey,  and  then 
black.  And  the  lights  came  out  and  cast  slender 
pillars  of  gold  and  green  and  scarlet  on  the  water. 

Max  Tack's  hand  moved  restlessly,  sought  Sophy's, 
found  it,  clasped  it.  Sophy's  hand  had  never  been 
clasped  like  that  before.  She  did  not  know  what  to 
do  with  it,  so  she  did  nothing — which  was  just  what 
she  should  have  done. 

"Warm  enough?"  asked  Max  Tack  tenderly. 

"Just  right,"  murmured  Sophy. 

The  dream  trip  ended  at  St.-Cloud.  They  learned 
to  their  dismay  that  the  boat  did  not  return  to  Paris. 
But  how  to  get  back?  They  asked  questions,  sought 
direction — always  a  frantic  struggle  in  Paris.  Sophy, 
in  the  glare  of  the  street  light,  looked  uglier  than  ever. 

"Just  a  minute,"  said  Max  Tack.  "I'll  find  a 
taxi." 

"Nonsense!  That  man  said  the  street  car  passed 
right  here,  and  that  we  should  get  off  at  the  Bois. 
Here  it  is  now!  Come  on!" 

Max  Tack  looked  about  helplessly,  shrugged  his 
shoulders  and  gave  it  up. 

"You  certainly  make  a  fellow  hump,"  he  said,  not 
without  a  note  of  admiration.  "And  why  are  you  so 
afraid  that  I'll  spend  some  money?"  as  he  handed  the 
conductor  the  tiny  fare. 

"I  don't  know — unless  it's  because  I've  had  to  work 
so  hard  all  my  life  for  mine." 


SOPHY-AS-SHE-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN  301 

At  Porte  Maillot  they  took  one  of  the  flock  of  waiting 
fiacres. 

"But  you  don't  want  to  go  home  yet!"  protested 
Max  Tack. 

"I — I  think  I  should  like  to  drive  in  the  BoisPark — 
if  you  don't  mind — that  is 

"Mind!"  cried  the  gallant  and  game  Max  Tack. 

Now  Max  Tack  was  no  villain;  but  it  never  occurred 
to  him  that  one  might  drive  in  the  Bois  with  a  girl 
and  not  make  love  to  her.  If  he  had  driven  with  Aurora 
in  her  chariot  he  would  have  held  her  hand  and  called 
her  tender  names.  So,  because  he  was  he,  and  because 
this  was  Paris,  and  because  it  was  so  dark  that  one 
could  not  see  Sophy's  extreme  plainness,  he  took  her 
unaccustomed  hand  again  in  his. 

"This  little  hand  was  never  meant  for  work,"  he 
murmured. 

Sophy,  the  acid,  the  tart,  said  nothing.  The  Bois 
Park  at  night  is  a  mystery  maze  and  lovely  beyond 
adjectives.  And  the  horse  of  that  particular  fiacre 
wore  a  little  tinkling  bell  that  somehow  added  to  the 
charm  of  the  night.  A  waterfall,  unseen,  tumbled  and 
frothed  near  by.  A  turn  in  the  winding  road  brought 
them  to  an  open  stretch,  and  they  saw  the  world  bathed 
in  the  light  of  a  yellow,  mellow,  roguish  Paris  moon. 
And  Max  Tack  leaned  over  quietly  and  kissed  Sophy 
Gold  on  the  lips. 

Now  Sophy  Gold  had  never  been  kissed  in  just  that 
way  before,  You  would  have  thought  she  would  not 


302  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

know  what  to  do;  but  the  plainest  woman,  as  well 
as  the  loveliest,  has  the  centuries  back  of  her.  Sophy's 
mother,  and  her  mother's  mother,  and  her  mother's 
mother's  mother  had  been  kissed  before  her.  So  they 
told  her  to  say: 

"You  shouldn't  have  done  that." 

And  the  answer,  too,  was  backed  by  the  centuries: 

"I  know  it;  but  I  couldn't  help  it.    Don't  be  angry!" 

"You  know,"  said  Sophy  with  a  little  tremulous 
laugh,  "I'm  very,  very  ugly — when  it  isn't  moonlight." 

"Paris,"  spake  Max  Tack,  diplomat,  "is  so  full  of 
medium-lookers  who  think  they're  pretty,  and  of  pretty 
ones  who  think  they're  beauties,  that  it  sort  of  rests 
my  jaw  and  mind  to  be  with  some  one  who  hasn't 
any  fake  notions  to  feed.  They're  all  right;  but 
give  me  a  woman  with  brains  every  time."  Which 
was  a  lie! 

They  drove  home  down  the  Bois — the  cool,  spacious, 
tree-bordered  Bois — and  through  the  Champs  filys£es. 
Because  he  was  an  artist  in  his  way,  and  because  every 
passing  fiacre  revealed  the  same  picture,  Max  Tack 
sat  very  near  her  and  looked  very  tender  and  held 
her  hand  in  his.  It  would  have  raised  a  laugh  at  Broad- 
way and  Forty-second.  It  was  quite,  quite  sane  and 
very  comf orting  in  Paris. 

At  the  door  of  the  hotel: 

"I'm  sailing  Wednesday,"  said  Max  Tack.  "You 
— you  won't  forget  me?" 

"Oh,  no— no!" 


SOPHY-AS-SHE-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN  303 

"You'll  call  me  up  or  run  into  the  office  when  you 
get  to  New  York?" 

"Oh,  yes!" 

He  walked  with  her  to  the  lift,  said  good-bye  and 
returned  to  the  fiacre  with  the  tinkling  bell.  There 
was  a  stunned  sort  of  look  in  his  face.  The  fiacre  meter 
registered  two  francs  seventy.  Max  Tack  did  a  light- 
ning mental  calculation.  The  expression  on  his  face 
deepened.  He  looked  up  at  the  cabby — the  red-faced, 
bottle-nosed  cabby,  with  his  absurd  scarlet  vest,  his 
mustard-coloured  trousers  and  his  glazed  top  hat. 

"Well,  can  you  beat  that?  Three  francs  thirty  for 
the  evening's  entertainment!  Why — why,  all  she 
wanted  was  just  a  little  love!" 

To  the  bottle-nosed  one  all  conversation  in  a  foreign 
language  meant  dissatisfaction  with  the  meter.  He 
tapped  that  glass-covered  contrivance  impatiently 
with  his  whip.  A  flood  of  French  bubbled  at  his  lips. 

"It's  all  right,  boy!  It's  all  right!  You  don't  get 
me!"  And  Max  Tacked  pressed  a  five-franc  piece  into 
the  outstretched  palm.  Then  to  the  hotel  porter: 
"Just  grab  a  taxi  for  me,  will  you?  These  tubs  make 


me  nervous." 


Sophy,  on  her  way  to  her  room,  hesitated,  turned, 
then  ran  up  the  stairs  to  the  next  floor  and  knocked 
gently  at  Miss  Morrissey's  door.  A  moment  later  that 
lady's  kimonoed  figure  loomed  large  in  the  doorway. 

"Who  is — oh,  it's  you!  Well,  I  was  just  going  to 
have  them  drag  the  Seine  for  you.  Come  in!" 


304  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

She  went  back  to  the  table.  Sheets  of  paper,  rough 
sketches  of  hat  models  done  from  memory,  notes  and 
letters  lay  scattered  all  about.  Sophy  leaned  against 
the  door  dreamily. 

"I've  been  working  this  whole  mortal  evening," 
went  on  Ella  Morrissey,  holding  up  a  pencil  sketch 
and  squinting  at  it  disapprovingly  over  her  working 
spectacles,  "and  I'm  so  tired  that  one  eye's  shut  and 
the  other's  running  on  first.  Where've  you  been, 
child?" 

"Oh,  driving!"  Sophy's  limp  hair  was  a  shade 
limper  than  usual,  and  a  strand  of  it  had  become 
loosened  and  straggled  untidily  down  over  her  ear. 
Her  eyes  looked  large  and  strangely  luminous.  "Do 
you  know,  I  love  Paris!" 

Ella  Morrissey  laid  down  her  pencil  sketch  and 
turned  slowly.  She  surveyed  Sophy  Gold,  her  shrewd 
eyes  twinkling. 

"That  so?    What  made  you  change  your  mind?" 

The  dreamy  look  in  Sophy's  eyes  deepened. 

"Why — I  don't  know.  There's  something  in  the 
atmosphere — something  in  the  air.  It  makes  you  do 
and  say  foolish  things.  It  makes  you  feel  queer  and 
light  and  happy." 

Ella  Morrissey's  bright  twinkle  softened  to  a  glow. 
She  stared  for  another  brief  moment.  Then  she  trundled 
over  to  where  Sophy  stood  and  patted  her  leathery  cheek. 
"Welcome  to  our  city!"  said  Miss  Ella  Morrissey. 


XI 

THE  THREE  OF  THEM 

FOR  eleven  years  Martha  Foote,  head  housekeeper 
at  the  Senate  Hotel,  Chicago,  had  catered,  unseen, 
and  ministered,  unknown,  to  that  great,  careless, 
shifting,  conglomerate  mass  known  as  the  Travelling 
Public.  Wholesale  hostessing  was  Martha  Footers 
job.  Senators  and  suffragists,  ambassadors  and  first 
families  had  found  ease  and  comfort  under  Martha 
Foote's  regime.  Her  carpets  had  bent  their  nap  to 
the  tread  of  kings,  and  show  girls,  and  buyers  from 
Montana.  Her  sheets  had  soothed  the  tired  limbs  of 
presidents,  and  princesses,  and  prima  donnas.  For 
the  Senate  Hotel  is  more  than  a  hostelry;  it  is  a 
Chicago  institution.  The  whole  world  is  churned  in 
at  its  revolving  front  door. 

For  eleven  years  Martha  Foote,  then,  had  beheld 
humanity  throwing  its  grimy  suitcases  on  her  im- 
maculate white  bedspreads;  wiping  its  muddy  boots 
on  her  bath  towels;  scratching  its  matches  on  her 
wall  paper;  scrawling  its  pencil  marks  on  her  cream 
woodwork;  spilling  its  greasy  crumbs  on  her  carpet; 
carrying  away  her  dresser  scarfs  and  pincushions. 
There  is  no  supremer  test  of  character.  Eleven  years 

305 


306  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

of  hotel  housekeepership  guarantees  a  knowledge  of 
human  nature  that  includes  some  things  no  living 
being  ought  to  know  about  her  fellow  men.  And 
inevitably  one  of  two  results  must  follow.  You  degen- 
erate into  a  bitter,  waspish,  and  fault-finding  shrew; 
or  you  develop  into  a  patient,  tolerant,  and  infinitely 
understanding  woman.  Martha  Foote  dealt  daily 
with  Polack  scrub  girls,  and  Irish  porters,  and  Swedish 
chambermaids,  and  Swiss  waiters,  and  Halsted  Street 
bell-boys.  Italian  tenors  fried  onions  in  her  Louis- 
Quinze  suite.  College  boys  burned  cigarette  holes  in  her 
best  linen  sheets.  Yet  any  one  connected  with  the 
Senate  Hotel,  from  Pete  the  pastry  cook  to  H.  G. 
Featherstone,  lessee-director,  could  vouch  for  Martha 
Foote's  serene  unacidulation. 

Don't  gather  from  this  that  Martha  Foote  was 
a  beaming,  motherly  person  who  called  you  dearie. 
Neither  was  she  one  of  those  managerial  and  magnifi- 
cent blonde  beings  occasionally  encountered  in  hotel 
corridors,  engaged  in  addressing  strident  remarks  to 
a  damp  and  crawling  huddle  of  calico  that  is  doing  some- 
thing sloppy  to  the  woodwork.  Perhaps  the  shortest 
cut  to  Martha  Foote's  character  is  through  Martha 
Foote's  bedroom.  (Twelfth  floor.  Turn  to  your 
left.  That's  it;  1246.  Come  in!) 

In  the  long  years  of  its  growth  and  success  the 
Senate  Hotel  had  known  the  usual  growing  pains. 
Starting  with  walnut  and  red  plush  it  had,  in  its 


THE  THREE  OF  THEM  307 

adolescence,  broken  out  all  over  into  brass  beds  and 
birds'-eye  maple.  This,  in  turn,  had  vanished  before 
mahogany  veneer  and  brocade.  Hardly  had  the  white 
scratches  on  these  ruddy  surfaces  been  doctored  by  the 
house  painter  when — whisk!  Away  with  that  sombre 
stuff!  And  in  minced  a  whole  troupe  of  near-French 
furnishings;  cream  enamel  beds,  cane-backed;  spindle- 
legged  dressing  tables  before  which  it  was  impossible 
to  dress;  perilous  chairs  with  raspberry  complexions. 
Through  all  these  changes  Martha  Foote,  in  her  big, 
bright  twelfth  floor  room,  had  clung  to  her  old  black 
walnut  set. 

The  bed,  to  begin  with,  was  a  massive,  towering 
edifice  with  a  headboard  that  scraped  the  lofty  ceiling. 
Head-  and  foot-board  were  fretted  and  carved  with 
great  blobs  representing  grapes,  and  cornucopias,  and 
tendrils,  and  knobs  and  other  bedevilments  of  the 
cabinet-maker's  craft.  It  had  been  polished  and 
rubbed  until  now  it  shone  like  soft  brown  satin.  There 
was  a  monumental  dresser  too,  with  a  liver-coloured 
marble  top.  Along  the  wall,  near  the  windows,  was  a 
couch;  a  heavy,  wheezing,  fat-armed  couch  decked 
out  in  white  ruffled  cushions.  I  suppose  the  mere  state- 
ment that,  in  Chicago,  Illinois,  Martha  Foote  kept 
these  cushions  always  crisply  white,  would  make  any 
further  characterization  superfluous.  The  couch  made 
you  think  of  a  plump  grandmother  of  bygone  days,  a 
beruffled  white  fichu  across  her  ample,  comfortable 
bosom.  Then  there  was  the  writing  desk;  a  substantial 


308  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

structure  that  bore  no  relation  to  the  pindling  rose-and- 
cream  affairs  that  graced  the  guest  rooms.  It  was 
the  solid  sort  of  desk  at  which  an  English  novelist  of 
the  three-volume  school  might  have  written  a  whole 
row  of  books  without  losing  his  dignity  or  cramping 
his  style.  Martha  Foote  used  it  for  making  out  reports 
and  instruction  sheets,  for  keeping  accounts,  and  for 
her  small  private  correspondence. 

Such  was  Martha  Foote's  room.  In  a  modern  and 
successful  hotel,  whose  foyer  was  rose-shaded,  brass- 
grilled,  peacock-alleyed  and  tessellated,  that  bed- 
sitting-room  of  hers  was  as  wholesome,  and  satisfying, 
and  real  as  a  piece  of  home-made  rye  bread  on  a  tray 
of  French  pastry;  and  as  incongruous 

It  was  to  the  orderly  comfort  of  these  accustomed 
surroundings  that  the  housekeeper  of  the  Senate 
Hotel  opened  her  eyes  this  Tuesday  morning.  Opened 
them,  and  lay  a  moment,  bridging  the  morphean 
chasm  that  lay  between  last  night  and  this  morning. 
It  was  6:30  A.  M.  It  is  bad  enough  to  open  one's 
eyes  at  6:30  on  Monday  morning.  But  to  open  them  at 
6:30  on  Tuesday  morning,  after  an  indigo  Monday. 
.  .  .  The  taste  of  yesterday  lingered,  brackish,  in 
Martha's  mouth. 

"Oh,  well,  it  won't  be  as  bad  as  yesterday,  anyway. 
It  can't."  So  she  assured  herself,  as  she  lay  there. 
"There  never  were  two  days  like  that,  hand  running. 
Not  even  in  the  hotel  business." 

For  yesterday  had  been  what  is  known  as  a  muddy 


THE  THREE  OF  THEM  309 

Monday.  Thick,  murky,  and  oozy  with  trouble.  Two 
conventions,  three  banquets,  the  lobby  so  full  of 
khaki  that  it  looked  like  a  sand-storm,  a  threatened 
strike  in  the  laundry,  a  travelling  man  in  two-twelve 
who  had  the  grippe  and  thought  he  was  dying,  a 
shortage  of  towels  (that  bugaboo  of  the  hotel  house- 
keeper) due  to  the  laundry  trouble  that  had  kept  the 
linen-room  telephone  jangling  to  the  tune  of  a  hundred 
damp  and  irate  guests.  And  weaving  in  and  out,  and 
above,  and  about  and  through  it  all,  like  a  neuralgic 
toothache  that  can't  be  located,  persisted  the  con- 
stant, nagging,  maddening  complaints  of  the  Chronic 
Kicker  in  six-eighteen. 

Six-eighteen  was  a  woman.  She  had  arrived  Monday 
morning,  early.  By  Monday  night  every  girl  on  the 
switchboard  had  the  nervous  jumps  when  they  plugged 
in  at  her  signal.  She  had  changed  her  rooms,  and  back 
again.  She  had  quarrelled  with  the  room  clerk.  She 
had  complained  to  the  office  about  the  service,  the 
food,  the  linen,  the  lights,  the  noise,  the  chamber- 
maid, all  the  bell-boys,  and  the  colour  of  the  furnish- 
ings in  her  suite.  She  said  she  couldn't  live  with  that 
colour.  It  made  her  sick.  Between  8:30  and  10:30  that 
night,  there  had  come  a  lull.  Six-eighteen  was  doing  her 
turn  at  the  Majestic. 

Martha  Foote  knew  that.  She  knew,  too,  that  her 
name  was  Geisha  McCoy,  and  she  knew  what  that 
name  meant,  just  as  you  do.  She  had  even  laughed 
and  quickened  and  responded  to  Geisha  McCoy's 


310  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

manipulation  of  her  audience,  just  as  you  have.  Martha 
Foote  knew  the  value  of  the  personal  note,  and  it  had 
been  her  idea  that  had  resulted  in  the  rule  which 
obliged  elevator  boys,  chambermaids,  floor  clerks, 
doormen  and  waiters  if  possible,  to  learn  the  names  of 
Senate  Hotel  guests,  no  matter  how  brief  their  stay. 

"They  like  it,"  she  had  said,  to  Manager  Brant. 
"You  know  that  better  than  I  do.  They'll  be  flattered, 
and  surprised,  and  tickled  to  death,  and  they'll  go 
back  to  Burlington,  Iowa,  and  tell  how  well  known 
they  are  at  the  Senate." 

When  the  suggestion  was  met  with  the  argument  that 
no  human  being  could  be  expected  to  perform  such 
daily  feats  of  memory  Martha  Foote  battered  it  down 
with: 

"That's  just  where  you're  mistaken.  The  first 
few  days  are  bad.  After  that  it's  easier  every  day, 
until  it  becomes  mechanical.  I  remember  when  I 
first  started  waiting  on  table  in  my  mother's  quick 
lunch  eating  house  in  Sorghum,  Minnesota.  I'd  bring 
'em  wheat  cakes  when  they'd  ordered  pork  and  beans, 
but  it  wasn't  two  weeks  before  I  could  take  six  orders, 
from  soup  to  pie,  without  so  much  as  forgetting  the 
catsup.  Habit,  that's  all." 

So  she,  as  well  as  the  minor  hotel  employes,  knew 
six-eighteen  as  Geisha  McCoy.  Geisha  McCoy,  who 
got  a  thousand  a  week  for  singing  a  few  songs  and 
chatting  informally  with  the  delighted  hundreds  on 
the  other  side  of  the  footlights.  Geisha  McCoy  made 


THE  THREE  OF  THEM  311 

nothing  of  those  same  footlights.  She  reached  out,  so 
to  speak,  and  shook  hands  with  you  across  their 
amber  glare.  Neither  lovely  nor  alluring,  this  woman. 
And  as  for  her  voice! — And  yet  for  ten  years  or  more 
this  rather  plain  person,  somewhat  dumpy,  no  longer 
young,  had  been  singing  her  every-day,  human  songs 
about  every-day,  human  people.  And  invariably  (and 
figuratively)  her  audience  clambered  up  over  the 
footlights,  and  sat  in  her  lap.  She  had  never  resorted 
to  cheap  music-hall  tricks.  She  had  never  invited 
the  gallery  to  join  in  the  chorus.  She  descended  to 
no  finger-snapping.  But  when  she  sang  a  song  about  a 
waitress  she  was  a  waitress.  She  never  hesitated  to 
twist  up  her  hair,  and  pull  down  her  mouth,  to  get  an 
effect.  She  didn't  seem  to  be  thinking  about  herself, 
at  all,  or  about  her  clothes,  or  her  method,  or  her 
effort,  or  anything  but  the  audience  that  was  plastic 
to  her  deft  and  magic  manipulation. 

Until  very  recently.  Six  months  had  wrought  a 
subtle  change  in  Geisha  McCoy.  She  still  sang  her 
every-day,  human  songs  about  every-day,  human 
people.  But  you  failed,  somehow,  to  recognise  them 
as  such.  They  sounded  sawdust-stuffed.  And  you  were 
likely  to  hear  the  man  behind  you  say,  "Yeh,  but 
you  ought  to  have  heard  her  five  years  ago.  She's 
about  through." 

Such  was  six-eighteen.  Martha  Foote,  luxuriating  in 
that  one  delicious  moment  between  her  6:30  awaken- 
ing, and  her  6:31  arising,  mused  on  these  things.  She 


3i2  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

thought  of  how,  at  eleven  o'clock  the  night  before, 
her  telephone  had  rung  with  the  sharp  zing!  of  trouble. 
The  voice  of  Irish  Nellie,  on  night  duty  on  the  sixth 
floor,  had  sounded  thick-brogued,  sure  sign  of  distress 
with  her. 

"I'm  sorry  to  be  a-botherin'  ye,  Mis'  Phut.  It's 
Nellie  speakin' — Irish  Nellie  on  the  sixt'." 

"What's  the  trouble,  Nellie?" 

"It's  that  six-eighteen  again.  She's  goin'  on  like 
mad.  She's  carryin'  on  something  fierce." 

"What  about?" 

"Th'— th'  blankets,  Mis'  Phut." 

"Blankets? " 

"She  says — it's  her  wurruds,  not  mine — she  says 
they're  vile.  Vile,  she  says." 

Maptha  Foote's  spine  had  stiffened.  "In  this  house! 
Vile!" 

If  there  was  one  thing  more  than  another  upon  which 
Martha  Foote  prided  herself  it  was  the  Senate  Hotel 
bed  coverings.  Creamy,  spotless,  downy,  they  were  her 
especial  fad.  "Brocade  chairs,  and  pink  lamps,  and 
gold  snake- work  are  all  well  and  good,"  she  was  wont 
to  say,  "and  so  are  American  Beauties  in  the  lobby 
and  white  gloves  on  the  elevator  boys.  But  it's  the 
blankets  on  the  beds  that  stamp  a  hotel  first  or  second 
class."  And  now  this,  from  Nellie. 

"I  know  how  ye  feel,  an'  all.  I  sez  to  'er,  I  sez: 
'There  never  was  a  blanket  in  this  house?  I  sez,  'that 
didn't  look  as  if  it  cud  be  sarved  up  wit'  whipped 


THE  THREE  OF  THEM  313 

cr-ream/  I  sez,  'an'  et,'  I  sez  to  her;  'an'  fu'thermore/ 
I  sez- 

"  Never  mind,  Nellie.  I  know.  But  we  never  argue 
with  guests.  You  know  that  rule  as  well  as  I.  The 
guest  is  right — always.  I'll  send  up  the  linen-room 
keys.  You  get  fresh  blankets;  new  ones.  And  no 
arguments.  But  I  want  to  see  those — those  vile " 

"Listen,  Mis'  Phut."  Irish  Nellie's  voice,  until  now 
shrill  with  righteous  anger,  dropped  a  discreet  octave. 
"I  seen  'em.  An'  they  are  vile.  Wait  a  minnit!  But 
why?  Becus  that  there  maid  of  hers — that  yella' 
hussy — give  her  a  body  massage,  wit'  cold  cream  an' 
all,  usin'  th'  blankets  f'r  coverin',  an'  smearin'  'em 
right  an'  lift.  This  was  afther  they  come  back  from 
th'  theayter.  Th'  crust  of  thim  people,  using  the 
iligent  blankets  off'n  the  beds  t' " 

"Good  night,  Nellie.    And  thank  you." 

"Sure,  ye  know  I'm  that  upset  f'r  distarbin'  yuh, 
an'  all,  but " 

Martha  Foote  cast  an  eye  toward  the  great  walnut 
bed.  "That's  all  right.  Only,  Nellie- 

"Yesm'm." 

"If  I'm  disturbed  again  on  that  woman's  account 
for  anything  less  than  murder " 

"Yesm'm?" 

"Well,  there'll  be  one,  that's  all.    Good  night." 

Such  had  been  Monday's  cheerful  close. 

Martha  Foote  sat  up  in  bed,  now,  preparatory  to 
the  heroic  flinging  aside  of  the  covers.  "No,"  she 


314  CHEERFUL—BY  REQUEST 

assured  herself,  "it  can't  be  as  bad  as  yesterday." 
She  reached  round  and  about  her  pillow,  groping  for 
the  recalcitrant  hairpin  that  always  slipped  out  during 
the  night;  found  it,  and  twisted  her  hair  into  a  hard 
bathtub  bun. 

With  a  jangle  that  tore  through  her  half-wakened 
senses  the  telephone  at  her  bedside  shrilled  into  life. 
Martha  Foote,  hairpin  in  mouth,  turned  and  eyed  it, 
speculatively,  fearfully.  It  shrilled  on  in  her  very  face, 
and  there  seemed  something  taunting  and  vindictive 
about  it.  One  long  ring,  followed  by  a  short  one;  a 
long  ring,  a  short.  "Ca-a-an't  it?  Ca-a-an't  it?" 

"Something  tells  me  I'm  wrong,"  Martha  Foote 
told  herself,  ruefully,  and  reached  for  the  blatant, 
snarling  thing. 

"Yes?" 

"Mrs.  Foote?  This  is  Healy,  the  night  clerk.  Say, 
Mrs.  Foote,  I  think  you'd  better  step  down  to  six- 
eighteen  and  see  what's " 

"I  am  wrong,"  said  Martha  Foote. 

"What's  that?" 

"Nothing.  Go  on.  Will  I  step  down  to  six-eighteen 
and ?" 

"She's  sick,  or  something.  Hysterics,  I'd  say.  As 
far  as  I  could  make  out  it  was  something  about  a  noise, 

or  a  sound  or Anyway,  she  can't  locate  it,  and 

her  maid  says  if  we  don't  stop  it  right  away " 

"I'll  go  down.  Maybe  it's  the  plumbing.  Or  the 
radiator.  Did  you  ask?" 


THE  THREE  OF  THEM  315 

"No,  nothing  like  that.  She  kept  talking  about 
a  wail." 

"A  what!" 

"A  wail.  A  kind  of  groaning,  you  know.  And  then 
dull  raps  on  the  wall,  behind  the  bed." 

"Now  look  here,  Ed  Healy;  I  get  up  at  6:30,  but 
I  can't  see  a  joke  before  ten.  If  you're  trying  to  be 
funny!- 

" Funny!  Why,  say,  listen,  Mrs.  Foote.  I  may 
be  a  night  clerk,  but  I'm  not  so  low  as  to  get  you 
out  at  half  past  six  to  spring  a  thing  like  that  in  fun. 
I  mean  it.  So  did  she." 

"But  a  kind  of  moaning!   And  then  dull  raps!" 

"Those  are  her  words.    A  kind  of  m " 

"Let's  not  make  a  chant  of  it.  I  think  I  get  you. 
I'll  be  down  there  in  ten  minutes.  Telephone  her, 
will  you?" 

"Can't  you  make  it  five?" 

"Not  without  skipping  something  vital." 

Still,  it  couldn't  have  been  a  second  over  ten,  includ- 
ing shoes,  hair,  and  hooks-and-eyes.  And  a  fresh 
white  blouse.  It  was  Martha  Foote' s  theory  that 
a  hotel  housekeeper,  dressed  for  work,  ought  to  be  as 
inconspicuous  as  a  steel  engraving.  She  would  have 
been,  too,  if  it  hadn't  been  for  her  eyes. 

She  paused  a  moment  before  the  door  of  six-eighteen 
and  took  a  deep  breath.  At  the  first  brisk  rat-tat  of 
her  knuckles  on  the  door  there  had  sounded  a  shrill 
"Come  in!"  But  before  she  could  turn  the  knob  the 


3i6  CHEERFUL—BY  REQUEST 

door  was  flung  open  by  a  kimonoed  mulatto  girl,  her 
eyes  all  whites.  The  girl  began  to  jabber,  incoherently, 
but  Martha  Foote  passed  on  through  the  little  hall 
to  the  door  of  the  bedroom. 

Six-eighteen  was  in  bed.  At  sight  of  her  Martha 
Foote  knew  that  she  had  to  deal  with  an  over- wrought 
woman.  Her  hair  was  pushed  back  wildly  from  her 
forehead.  Her  arms  were  clasped  about  her  knees. 
At  the  left  her  nightgown  had  slipped  down  so  that 
one  plump  white  shoulder  gleamed  against  the  back- 
ground of  her  streaming  hair.  The  room  was  in  almost 
comic  disorder.  It  was  a  room  in  which  a  struggle  has 
taken  place  between  its  occupant  and  that  burning- 
eyed  hag,  Sleeplessness.  The  hag,  it  was  plain,  had 
won.  A  half-emptied  glass  of  milk  was  on  the  table 
by  the  bed.  Warmed,  and  sipped  slowly,  it  had  evi- 
dently failed  to  soothe.  A  tray  of  dishes  littered 
another  table.  Yesterday's  dishes,  their  contents 
congealed.  Books  and  magazines,  their  covers  spread 
wide  as  if  they  had  been  flung,  sprawled  where  they 
lay.  A  little  heap  of  grey-black  cigarette  stubs.  The 
window  curtain  awry  where  she  had  stood  there  during 
a  feverish  moment  of  the  sleepless  night,  looking  down 
upon  the  lights  of  Grant  Park  and  the  sombre  black 
void  beyond  that  was  Lake  Michigan.  A  tiny  satin 
bedroom  slipper  on  a  chair,  its  mate,  sole  up,  peeping 
out  from  under  the  bed.  A  pair  of  satin  slippers  alone, 
distributed  thus,  would  make  a  nun's  cell  look  dis- 
reputable. Over  all  this  disorder  the  ceiling  lights,  the 


THE  THREE  OF  THEM  317 

wall  lights,  and  the  light  from  two  rosy  lamps,  beat 
mercilessly  down;  and  upon  the  white-faced  woman 
in  the  bed. 

She  stared,  hollow-eyed,  at  Martha  Foote.  Martha 
Foote,  in  the  doorway,  gazed  serenely  back  upon  her. 
And  Geisha  McCoy's  quick  intelligence  and  drama- 
sense  responded  to  the  picture  of  this  calm  and  capable 
figure  in  the  midst  of  the  feverish,  over-lighted,  over- 
heated room.  In  that  moment  the  nervous  pucker 
between  her  eyes  ironed  out  ever  so  little,  and  some- 
thing resembling  a  wan  smile  crept  into  her  face. 
And  what  she  said  was: 

"I  wouldn't  have  believed  it." 

"Believed  what?"  inquired  Martha  Foote,  pleas- 
antly. 

"That  there  was  anybody  left  in  the  world  who 
could  look  like  that  in  a  white  shirtwaist  at  6:30 
A.  M.  Is  that  all  your  own  hair?" 

"Strictly." 

"Some  people  have  all  the  luck,"  sighed  Geisha 
McCoy,  and  dropped  listlessly  back  on  her  pillows. 
Martha  Foote  came  forward  into  the  room.  At  that 
instant  the  woman  in  the  bed  sat  up  again,  tense, 
every  nerve  strained  in  an  attitude  of  listening.  The 
mulatto  girl  had  come  swiftly  to  the  foot  of  the  bed 
and  was  clutching  the  footboard,  her  knuckles  showing 
white. 

"Listen!"  A  hissing  whisper  from  the  haggard 
woman  in  the  bed.  "What's  that?" 


3i8  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

"Wha'  dat!"  breathed  the  coloured  girl,  all  her 
elegance  gone,  her  every  look  and  motion  a  hundred- 
year  throwback  to  her  voodoo-haunted  ancestors. 

The  three  women  remained  rigid,  listening.  From 
the  wall  somewhere  behind  the  bed  came  a  low,  weird 
monotonous  sound,  half  wail,  half  croaking  moan, 
like  a  banshee  with  a  cold.  A  clanking,  then,  as  of 
chains.  A  s-s-swish.  Then  three  dull  raps,  seemingly 
from  within  the  very  wall  itself. 

The  coloured  girl  was  trembling.  Her  lips  were 
moving,  soundlessly.  But  Geisha  McCoy's  emotion 
was  made  of  different  stuff. 

"Now  look  here,"  she  said,  desperately,  "I  don't 
mind  a  sleepless  night.  I'm  used  to  'em.  But  usually 
I  can  drop  off  at  five,  for  a  little  while.  And  that's 
been  going  on — well,  I  don't  know  how  long.  It's 
driving  me  crazy.  Blanche,  you  fool,  stop  that  hand 
wringing!  I  tell  you  there's  no  such  thing  as  ghosts. 
Now  you" — she  turned  to  Martha  Foote  again — 
"you  tell  me,  for  God's  sake,  what  is  that!" 

And  into  Martha  Foote's  face  there  came  such  a 
look  of  mingled  compassion  and  mirth  as  to  bring  a 
quick  flame  of  fury  into  Geisha  McCoy's  eyes. 

"Look  here,  you  may  think  it's  funny  but " 

"I  don't.  I  don't.  Wait  a  minute."  Martha  Foote 
turned  and  was  gone.  An  instant  later  the  weird 
sounds  ceased.  The  two  women  in  the  room  looked 
toward  the  door,  expectantly.  And  through  it  came 
Martha  Foote,  smiling.  She  turned  and  beckoned 


THE  THREE  OF  THEM  319 

to  some  one  without.  "Come  on,"  she  said.  "Come 
on."  She  put  out  a  hand,  encouragingly,  and  brought 
forward  the  shrinking,  cowering,  timorous  figure  of 
Anna  Czarnik,  scrub-woman  on  the  sixth  floor.  Her 
hand  still  on  her  shoulder  Martha  Foote  led  her  to  the 
centre  of  the  room,  where  she  stood,  gazing  dumbly 
about.  She  was  the  scrub-woman  you've  seen  in  every 
hotel  from  San  Francisco  to  Scituate.  A  shapeless, 
moist,  blue  calico  mass.  Her  shoes  turned  up  ludi- 
crously at  the  toes,  as  do  the  shoes  of  one  who  crawls 
her  way  backward,  crab-like,  on  hands  and  knees. 
Her  hands  were  the  shrivelled,  unlovely  members  that 
bespeak  long  and  daily  immersion  in  dirty  water.  But 
even  had  these  invariable  marks  of  her  trade  been 
lacking,  you  could  not  have  failed  to  recognise  her 
type  by  the  large  and  glittering  mock-diamond  comb 
which  failed  to  catch  up  her  dank  and  stringy  hair 
in  the  back. 

One  kindly  hand  on  the  woman's  arm,  Martha 
Foote  performed  the  introduction. 

"This  is  Mrs.  Anna  Czarnik,  late  of  Poland.  Widowed. 
Likewise  childless.  Also  brotherless.  Also  many  other 
uncomfortable  things.  But  the  life  of  the  crowd  in 
the  scrub-girls'  quarters  on  the  top  floor.  Aren't 
you,  Anna?  Mrs.  Anna  Czarnik,  I'm  sorry  to  say,  is 
the  source  of  the  blood-curdling  moan,  and  the  swish- 
ing,  and  the  clanking,  and  the  ghost-raps.  There  is 
a  service  stairway  just  on  the  other  side  of  this  wall. 
Anna  Czarnik  was  performing  her  morning  job  of 


320  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

scrubbing  it.  The  swishing  was  her  wet  rag.  The 
clanking  was  her  pail.  The  dull  raps  her  scrubbing 
brush  striking  the  stair  corner  just  behind  your  wall." 

"  You're  forgetting  the  wail,"  Geisha  McCoy  sug- 
gested, icily. 

"No,  I'm  not.  The  wail,  I'm  afraid,  was  Anna 
Czarnik,  singing." 

"Singing?" 

Martha  Foote  turned  and  spoke  a  gibberish  of 
Polish  and  English  to  the  bewildered  woman  at  her 
side.  Anna  Czarnik' s  dull  face  lighted  up  ever  so 
little. 

"She  says  the  thing  she  was  singing  is  a  Polish 
folk-song  about  death  and  sorrow,  and  it's  called  a — 
what  was  that,  Anna?" 

"Dumka." 

"It's  called  a  dumka.  It's  a  song  of  mourning,  you 
see?  Of  grief.  And  of  bitterness  against  the  invaders 
who  have  laid  her  country  bare." 

"Well,  what's  the  ideal"  demanded  Geisha  McCoy. 
"What  kind  of  a  hotel  is  this,  anyway?  Scrub-girls 
waking  people  up  in  the  middle  of  the  night  with  a 
Polish  cabaret.  If  she  wants  to  sing  her  hymn  of 
hate  why  does  she  have  to  pick  on  me!" 

"I'm  sorry.  You  can  go,  Anna.  No  sing,  remember ! 
Sh-sh-sh!"  ' 

Anna  Czarnik  nodded  and  made  her  unwieldy 
escape. 

Geisha  McCoy  waved  a  hand  at  the  mulatto  maid. 


THE  THREE  OF  THEM  321 

"Go  to  your  room,  Blanche.  I'll  ring  when  I  need 
you."  The  girl  vanished,  gratefully,  without  a  back- 
ward glance  at  the  disorderly  room.  Martha  Foote 
felt  herself  dismissed,  too.  And  yet  she  made  no  move 
to  go.  She  stood  there,  in  the  middle  of  the  room,  and 
every  housekeeper  inch  of  her  yearned  to  tidy  the 
chaos  all  about  her,  and  every  sympathetic  impulse 
urged  her  to  comfort  the  nerve-tortured  woman  before 
her.  Something  of  this  must  have  shone  in  her  face, 
for  Geisha  McCoy's  tone  was  half-pettish,  half- 
apologetic  as  she  spoke. 

"You've  no  business  allowing  things  like  that,  you 
know.  My  nerves  are  all  shot  to  pieces  anyway.  But 
even  if  they  weren't,  who  could  stand  that  kind  of 
torture?  A  woman  like  that  ought  to  lose  her  job 
for  that.  One  word  from  me  at  the  office  and  she— 

"Don't  say  it,  then,"  interrupted  Martha  Foote, 
and  came  over  to  the  bed.  Mechanically  her  fingers 
straightened  the  tumbled  covers,  removed  a  jumble 
of  magazines,  flicked  away  the  crumbs.  "  I'm  sorry  you 
were  disturbed.  The  scrubbing  can't  be  helped,  of 
course,  but  there  is  a  rule  against  unnecessary  noise, 
and  she  shouldn't  have  been  singing.  But — well,  I 
suppose  she's  got  to  find  relief,  somehow.  Would  you 
believe  that  woman  is  the  cut-up  of  the  top  floor? 
She's  a  natural  comedian,  and  she  does  more  for  me 
in  the  way  of  keeping  the  other  girls  happy  and  satis- 
fied than- 

"  What  about  me?   Where  do  I  come  in?   Instead  of 


322  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

sleeping  until  eleven  I'm  kept  awake  by  this  Polish 
dirge.  I  go  on  at  the  Majestic  at  four,  and  again  at 
9.45  and  I'm  skk,  I  tell  you!  Sick! 

She  looked  it,  too.  Suddenly  she  twisted  about  and 
flung  herself,  face  downward,  on  the  pillow.  "Oh, 
God!"  she  cried,  without  any  particular  expression. 
"Oh,  God!  Oh,  God!" 

That  decided  Martha  Foote. 

She  crossed  over  to  the  other  side  of  the  bed,  first 
flicking  off  the  glaring  top  lights,  sat  down  beside  the 
shaken  woman  on  the  pillows,  and  laid  a  cool,  light 
hand  on  her  shoulder. 

"It  isn't  as  bad  as  that.  Or  it  won't  be,  anyway, 
after  you've  told  me  about  it." 

She  waited.  Geisha  McCoy  remained  as  she  was, 
face  down.  But  she  did  not  openly  resent  the  hand  on 
her  shoulder.  So  Martha  Foote  waited.  And  as 
suddenly  as  Six-eighteen  had  flung  herself  prone  she 
twisted  about  and  sat  up,  breathing  quickly.  She 
passed  a  hand  over  her  eyes  and  pushed  back  her 
streaming  hair  with  an  oddly  desperate  little  gesture. 
Her  lips  were  parted,  her  eyes  wide. 

"They've  got  away  from  me,"  she  cried,  and  Martha 
Foote  knew  what  she  meant.  "I  can't  hold  'em  any 
more.  I  work  as  hard  as  ever — harder.  That's  it. 
It  seems  the  harder  I  work  the  colder  they  get.  Last 
week,  in  Indianapolis,  they  couldn't  have  been  more 
indifferent  if  I'd  been  the  educational  film  that  closes 
the  show.  And,  oh  my  God!  They  sit  and  knit!" 


THE  THREE  OF  THEM  323 

"Knit!"  echoed  Martha  Foote.  "But  everybody's 
knitting  nowadays." 

"Not  when  I'm  on.  They  can't.  But  they  do. 
There  were  three  of  them  in  the  third  row  yesterday 
afternoon.  One  of  'em  was  doing  a  grey  sock  with 
four  shiny  needles.  Four!  I  couldn't  keep  my  eyes 
off  of  them.  And  the  second  was  doing  a  sweater,  and 
the  third  a  helmet.  I  could  tell  by  the  shape.  And 
you  can't  be  funny,  can  you,  when  you're  hypnotised 
by  three  stony-faced  females  all  doubled  up  over  a 
bunch  of  olive-drab?  Olive-drab!  I'm  scared  of  it. 
It  sticks  out  all  over  the  house.  Last  night  there 
were  two  young  kids  in  uniform  right  down  in  the  first 
row,  centre,  right.  I'll  bet  the  oldest  wasn't  twenty- 
three.  There  they  sat,  looking  up  at  me  with  their 
baby  faces.  That's  all  they  are.  Kids.  The  house 
seems  to  be  peppered  with  'em.  You  wouldn't  think 
olive-drab  could  stick  out  the  way  it  does.  I  can  see 
it  farther  than  red.  I  can  see  it  day  and  night.  I 
can't  seem  to  see  anything  else.  I  can't 

Her  head  came  down  on  her  arms,  that  rested  on  her 
tight-hugged  knees. 

"Somebody  of  yours  in  it?"  Martha  Foote  asked, 
quietly.  She  waited.  Then  she  made  a  wild  guess — 
an  intuitive  guess.  "Son?" 

"How  did  you  know?"  Geisha  McCoy's  head  came 
up. 

"I  didn't." 

"Well,  you're  right.    There  aren't  fifty  people  in  the 


324  CHEERFUL—BY  REQUEST 

world,  outside  my  own  friends,  who  know  Fve  got  a 
grown-up  son.  It's  bad  business  to  have  them  think 
you're  middle-aged.  And  besides,  there's  nothing 
of  the  stage  about  Fred.  He's  one  of  those  square- 
jawed  kids  that  are  just  cut  out  to  be  engineers.  Third 
year  at  Boston  Tech." 

"  Is  he  still  there,  then?" 

"There!  He's  in  France,  that's  where  he  is.  Some- 
where— in  France.  And  I've  worked  for  twenty-two 
years  with  everything  in  me  just  set,  like  an  alarm- 
clock,  for  the  time  when  that  kid  would  step  off  on 
his  own.  He  always  hated  to  take  money  from  me, 
and  I  loved  him  for  it.  I  never  went  on  that  I  didn't 
think  of  him.  I  never  came  off  with  a  half  dozen  en- 
cores that  I  didn't  wish  he  could  hear  it.  Why,  when 
I  played  a  college  town  it  used  to  be  a  riot,  because 
I  loved  every  fresh-faced  boy  hi  the  house,  and  they 
knew  it.  And  now — and  now — what's  there  in  it? 
What's  there  in  it?  I  can't  even  hold  'em  any  more. 
I'm  through,  I  tell  you.  I'm  through  1" 

And  waited  to  be  disputed.  Martha  Foote  did  not 
disappoint  her. 

"There's  just  this  in  it.  It's  up  to  you  to  make  those 
three  women  in  the  third  row  forget  what  they're 
knitting  for,  even  if  they  don't  forget  their  knitting. 
Let  'em  go  on  knitting  with  their  hands,  but  keep  their 
heads  off  it.  That's  your  job.  You're  lucky  to  have 
it." 

^Lucky?" 


THE  THREE  OF  THEM  325 

"Yes  ma'am!  You  can  do  all  the  dumka  stuff  in 
private,  the  way  Anna  Czarnik  does,  but  it's  up  to 
you  to  make  them  laugh  twice  a  day  for  twenty  min- 
utes." 

"It's  all  very  well  for  you  to  talk  that  cheer-o 
stuff.  It  hasn't  come  home  to  you,  I  can  see  that." 

Martha  Foote  smiled.  "If  you  don't  mind  my  say- 
ing it,  Miss  McCoy,  you're  too  worn  out  from  lack  of 
sleep  to  see  anything  clearly.  You  don't  know  me, 
but  I  do  know  you,  you  see.  I  know  that  a  year  ago 
Anna  Czarnik  would  have  been  the  most  interesting 
thing  in  this  town,  for  you.  You'd  have  copied  her 
clothes,  and  got  a  translation  of  her  sob  song,  and  made 
her  as  real  to  a  thousand  audiences  as  she  was  to  us 
this  morning;  tragic  history,  patient  animal  face, 
comic  shoes  and  all.  And  that's  the  trouble  with  you, 
my  dear.  When  we  begin  to  brood  about  our  own 
troubles  we  lose  what  they  call  the  human  touch. 
And  that's  your  business  asset." 

Geisha  McCoy  was  looking  up  at  her  with  a  whim- 
sical half-smile.  "Look  here.  You  know  too  much. 
You're  not  really  the  hotel  housekeeper,  are  you?" 

"lam." 

"Well,  then,  you  weren't  always " 

"Yes  I  was.  So  far  as  I  know  I'm  the  only  hotel 
housekeeper  in  history  who  can't  look  back  to  the  time 
when  she  had  three  servants  of  her  own,  and  her  pri* 
vate  carriage.  I'm  no  decayed  black-silk  gentle- 
woman. Not  me.  My  father  drove  a  hack  in  Sorgham, 


326  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

Minnesota,  and  my  mother  took  in  boarders  and  I 
helped  wait  on  table.  I  married  when  I  was  twenty, 
my  man  died  two  years  later,  and  I've  been  earning 
my  living  ever  since. " 

"Happy?" 

"I  must  be,  because  I  don't  stop  to  think  about  it. 
It's  part  of  my  job  to  know  everything  that  concerns 
the  comfort  of  the  guests  in  this  hotel." 

"Including  hysterics  in  six-eighteen?" 

"Including.  And  that  reminds  me.  Up  on  the 
twelfth  floor  of  this  hotel  there's  a  big,  old-fashioned 
bedroom.  In  half  an  hour  I  can  have  that  room  made 
up  with  the  softest  linen  sheets,  and  the  curtains  pulled 
down,  and  not  a  sound.  That  room's  so  restful  it  would 
put  old  Insomnia  himself  to  sleep.  Will  you  let  me 
tuck  you  away  in  it?" 

Geisha  McCoy  slid  down  among  her  rumpled  covers, 
and  nestled  her  head  in  the  lumpy,  tortured  pillows. 
"Me!  I'm  going  to  stay  right  here." 

"But  this  room's — why,  it's  as  stale  as  a  Pullman 
sleeper.  Let  me  have  the  chambermaid  in  to  freshen 
it  up  while  you're  gone." 

"I'm  used  to  it.  I've  got  to  have  a  room  mussed 
up,  to  feel  at  home  in  it.  Thanks  just  the  same." 

Martha  Foote  rose.  "I'm  sorry.  I  just  thought  if 
I  could  help- 
Geisha  McCoy  leaned  forward  with  one  of  her  quick 
movements  and  caught  Martha  Foote's  hand  in  both 
her  own.  "You  have!  And  I  don't  mean  to  be  rude 


THE  THREE  OF  THEM  327 

when  I  tell  you  I  haven't  felt  so  much  like  sleeping  in 
weeks.  Just  turn  out  those  lights,  will  you?  And  sort 
of  tiptoe  out,  to  give  the  effect."  Then,  as  Martha 
Foote  reached  the  door,  "And  oh,  say!  D'you  think 
she'd  sell  me  those  shoes?" 

Martha  Foote  didn't  get  her  dinner  that  night  until 
almost  eight,  what  with  one  thing  and  another.  Still 
as  days  go,  it  wasn't  so  bad  as  Monday;  she  and 
Irish  Nellie,  who  had  come  in  to  turn  down  her  bed, 
agreed  on  that.  The  Senate  Hotel  housekeeper  was 
having  her  dinner  in  her  room.  Tony,  the  waiter, 
had  just  brought  it  on  and  had  set  it  out  for  her,  a 
gleaming  island  of  white  linen,  and  dome-shaped 
metal  tops.  Irish  Nellie,  a  privileged  person  always, 
waxed  conversational  as  she  folded  back  the  bed  covers 
in  a  neat  triangular  wedge. 

"  Six-eighteen  kinda  ca'med  down,  didn't  she?  High 
toime,  the  divil.  She  had  us  jumpin'  yist'iddy.  I 
loike  t'  went  off  me  head  wid  her,  and  th'  day  girl  th' 
same.  Some  folks  ain't  got  no  feelin',  I  dunno." 

Martha  Foote  unfolded  her  napkin  with  a  little  tired 
gesture.  "You  can't  always  judge,  Nellie.  That 
woman's  got  a  son  who  has  gone  to  war,  and  she 
couldn't  see  her  way  clear  to  living  without  him.  She's 
better  now.  I  talked  to  her  this  evening  at  six.  She 
said  she  had  a  fine  afternoon." 

"Shure,  she  ain't  the  only  wan.  An'  what  do  you 
be  hearin'  from  your  boy,  Mis'  Phut,  that's  in  France?" 

"He's   well,   and   happy.      His   arm's   all   healed, 


328  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

and  he  says  he'll  be  in  it  again  by  the  time  I  get 
his  letter." 

"Humph,"  said  Irish  Nellie.  And  prepared  to  leave. 
She  cast  an  inquisitive  eye  over  the  little  table  as  she 
made  for  the  door — inquisitive,  but  kindly.  Her 
wide  Irish  nostrils  sniffed  a  familiar  smell.  "Well, 
fur  th'  land,  Mis'  Phut!  If  I  was  housekeeper  here, 
an'  cud  have  hothouse  strawberries,  an'  swatebreads 
undher  glass,  an'  sparrowgrass,  an'  chicken,  an'  ice 
crame,  the  way  you  can,  whiniver  yuh  loike,  I  wouldn't 
be  a-eatin'  cornbeef  an'  cabbage.  Not  me." 

"Oh,  yes  you  would,  Nellie,"  replied  Martha  Foote, 
quietly,  and  spooned  up  the  thin  amber  gravy.  "Oh, 
yes  you  would." 


XII 

SHORE   LEAVE 

TYLER  Kamps  was  a  tired  boy.  He  was  tired  from 
his  left  great  toe  to  that  topmost  spot  at  the  crown 
of  his  head  where  six  unruly  hairs  always  persisted  in 
sticking  straight  out  in  defiance  of  patient  brushing,  wet- 
ting, and  greasing.  Tyler  Kamps  was  as  tired  as  only  a 
boy  can  be  at  9.30  P.  M.  who  has  risen  at  5.30  A.  M.  Yet 
he  lay  wide  awake  in  his  hammock  eight  feet  above  the 
ground,  like  a  giant  silk-worm  in  an  incredible  cocoon 
and  listened  to  the  sleep-sounds  that  came  from  the 
depths  of  two  hundred  similar  cocoons  suspended  at 
regular  intervals  down  the  long  dark  room.  A  chorus 
of  deep  regular  breathing,  with  an  occasional  grunt  or 
sigh,  denoting  complete  relaxation.  Tyler  Kamps 
should  have  been  part  of  this  chorus,  himself.  Instead 
he  lay  staring  into  the  darkness,  thinking  mad  thoughts 
of  which  this  is  a  sample : 

"Gosh!  Wouldn't  I  like  to  sit  up  in  my  hammock 
and  give  one  yell!  The  kind  of  a  yell  a  movie  cowboy 
gives  on  a  Saturday  night,,  Wake  'em  up  and  stop  that 
— darned  old  breathing. 

Nerves.  He  breathed  deeply  himself,  once  or  twice, 
because  it  seemed,  somehow  to  relieve  his  feeling  of 

329 


330  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

irritation.  And  in  that  unguarded  moment  of  uncon- 
scious relaxation  Sleep,  that  had  been  lying  in  wait 
for  him  just  around  the  corner,  pounced  on  him  and 
claimed  him  for  its  own.  From  his  hammock  came  the 
deep,  regular  inhalation,  exhalation,  with  an  occasional 
grunt  or  sigh.  The  normal  sleep-sounds  of  a  very  tired 
boy. 

The  trouble  with  Tyler  Kamps  was  that  he  missed 
two  things  he  hadn't  expected  to  miss  at  all.  And  he 
missed  not  at  all  the  things  he  had  been  prepared  to 
miss  most  hideously. 

First  of  all,  he  had  expected  to  miss  his  mother.  If 
you  had  known  Stella  Kamps  you  could  readily  have 
understood  that.  Stella  Kamps  was  the  kind  of 
mother  they  sing  about  in  the  sentimental  ballads; 
mother,  pal,  and  sweetheart.  Which  was  where  she 
had  made  her  big  mistake.  When  one  mother  tries 
to  be  all  those  things  to  one  son  that  son  has  a  very  fair 
chance  of  turning  out  a  mollycoddle.  The  war  was 
probably  all  that  saved  Tyler  Kamps  from  such  a  fate. 

In  the  way  she  handled  this  son  of  hers  Stella  Kamps 
had  been  as  crafty  and  skilful  and  velvet-gloved  as 
a  girl  with  her  beau.  The  proof  of  it  is  that  Tyler  had 
never  known  he  was  being  handled.  Some  folks  in 
Marvin,  Texas,  said  she  actually  flirted  with  him,  and 
they  were  almost  justified.  Certainly  the  way  she 
glanced  up  at  him  from  beneath  her  lashes  was  excused 
only  by  the  way  she  scolded  him  if  he  tracked  up  the 
kitchen  floor.  But  then,  Stella  Kamps  and  her  boy 


SHORE   LEAVE  331 

were  different,  anyway.  Marvin  folks  all  agreed  about 
that.  Flowers  on  the  table  at  meals.  Sitting  over  the 
supper  things  talking  and  laughing  for  an  hour  after 
they'd  finished  eating,  as  if  they  hadn't  seen  each  other 
in  years.  Reading  out  loud  to  each  other,  out  of  books 
and  then  going  on  like  mad  about  what  they'd  just 
read,  and  getting  all  het  up  about  it.  And  sometimes 
chasing  each  other  around  the  yard,  spring  evenings, 
like  a  couple  of  fool  kids.  Honestly,  if  a  body  didn't 
know  Stella  Kamps  so  well,  and  what  a  fight  she  had 
put  up  to  earn  a  living  for  herself  and  the  boy  after 
that  good-for-nothing  Kamps  up  and  left  her,  and 
what  a  housekeeper  she  was,  and  all,  a  person'd 
think — well 

So,  then,  Tyler  had  expected  to  miss  her  first  of  all. 
The  way  she  talked.  The  way  she  fussed  around  him 
without  in  the  least  seeming  to  fuss.  Her  special 
way  of  cooking  things.  Her  laugh  which  drew  laughter 
in  its  wake.  The  funny  way  she  had  of  saying  things, 
vitalising  commonplaces  with  the  spark  of  her  own 
electricity. 

And  now  he  missed  her  only  as  the  average  boy  of 
twenty-one  misses  the  mother  he  has  been  used  to  all 
his  life.  No  more  and  no  less.  Which  would  indicate 
that  Stella  Kamps,  in  her  protean  endeavours,  had 
overplayed  the  parts  just  a  trifle. 

He  had  expected  to  miss  the  boys  at  the  bank.  He 
had  expected  to  miss  the  Mandolin  Club.  The  Mando- 
lin Glub  met,  officially,  every  Thursday  and  spangled 


332  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

the  Texas  night  with  their  tinkling.  Five  rather 
dreamy-eyed  adolescents  slumped  in  stoop-shouldered 
comfort  over  the  instruments  cradled  in  their  arms, 
each  right  leg  crossed  limply  over  the  left,  each  great 
foot  that  dangled  from  the  bony  ankle,  keeping  rhythmic 
time  to  the  plunketty-plink-tinketty-plunk. 

He  had  expected  to  miss  the  familiar  faces  on  Main 
Street.  He  had  even  expected  to  miss  the  neighbours 
with  whom  he  and  his  mother  had  so  rarely  mingled. 
All  the  hundred  little,  intimate,  trivial,  everyday 
things  that  had  gone  to  make  up  his  life  back  home  in 
Marvin,  Texas — these  he  had  expected  to  miss. 

And  he  didn't. 

After  ten  weeks  at  the  Great  Central  Naval  Training 
Station  so  near  Chicago,  Illinois,  and  so  far  from 
Marvin,  Texas,  there  were  two  things  he  missed. 

He  wanted  the  decent  privacy  of  his  small  quiet 
bedroom  back  home. 

He  wanted  to  talk  to  a  girl. 

He  knew  he  wanted  the  first,  definitely.  He  didn't 
know  he  wanted  the  second.  The  fact  that  he  didn't 
know  it  was  Stella  Kamps'  fault.  She  had  kept  his 
boyhood  girlless,  year  and  year,  by  sheer  force  of  her 
own  love  for  him,  and  need  of  him,  and  by  the  charm 
and  magnetism  that  were  hers.  She  had  been  deprived 
of  a  more  legitimate  outlet  for  these  emotions.  Con- 
centrated on  the  boy,  they  had  sufficed  for  him.  The 
Marvin  girls  had  long  ago  given  him  up  as  hope- 
less. They  fell  back,  baffled,  their  keenest  weapons 


SHORE  LEAVE  333 

bulled  by  the  impenetrable  armour  of  his  impersonal 
gaze. 

The  room?  It  hadn't  been  much  of  a  room,  as  rooms 
go.  Bare,  clean,  asceptic,  with  a  narrow,  hard  white 
bed  and  a  maple  dresser  whose  second  drawer  always 
stuck  and  came  out  zig-zag  when  you  pulled  it;  and 
a  swimmy  mirror  that  made  one  side  of  your  face  look 
sort  of  lumpy,  and  higher  than  the  other  side.  In  one 
corner  a  bookshelf.  He  had  made  it  himself  at  manual 
training.  When  he  had  finished  it — the  planing,  the 
staining,  the  polishing — Chippendale  himself,  after 
he  had  designed  and  executed  his  first  gracious,  wide- 
seated,  back-fitting  chair,  could  have  felt  no  finer 
creative  glow.  As  for  the  books  it  held,  just  to  run 
your  eye  over  them  was  like  watching  Tyler  Kamps 
grow  up.  Stella  Kamps  had  been  a  Kansas  school 
teacher  in  the  days  before  she  met  and  married  Clint 
Kamps.  And  she  had  never  quite  got  over  it.  So 
the  book  case  contained  certain  things  that  a  fond 
mother  (with  a  teaching  past)  would  think  her  small 
son  ought  to  enjoy.  Things  like  "Tom  Brown  At 
Rugby"  and  "Hans  Brinker,  Or  the  Silver  Skates." 
He  had  read  them,  dutifully,  but  they  were  as  good  as 
new.  No  thumbed  pages,  no  ragged  edges,  no  creases 
and  tatters  where  eager  boy  hands  had  turned  a  page 
over — hastily.  No,  the  thumb-marked,  dog's-eared, 
grimy  ones  were,  as  always,  "Tom  Sawyer"  and 
"Huckleberry  Finn"  and  "Marching  Against  the 
Iroquois." 


334  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

A  hot  enough  little  room  in  the  Texas  summers.  A 
cold  enough  little  room  in  the  Texas  whiter s.  But 
his  own.  And  quiet.  He  used  to  lie  there  at  night, 
relaxed,  just  before  sleep  claimed  him,  and  he  could 
almost  feel  the  soft  Texas  night  enfold  him  like  a  great, 
velvety,  invisible  blanket,  soothing  him,  lulling  him. 
In  the  morning  it  had  been  pleasant  to  wake  up  to  its 
bare,  clean  whiteness,  and  to  the  tantalising  breakfast 
smells  coming  up  from  the  kitchen  below.  His  mother 
calling  from  the  foot  of  the  narrow  wooden  stairway : 

"Ty-ler!"  rising  inflection.  "  7>ler,"  falling  inflec- 
tion. "Get  up,  son!  Breakfast'll  be  ready." 

It  was  always  a  terrific  struggle  between  a  last 
delicious  stolen  five  minutes  between  the  covers,  and 
the  scent  of  the  coffee  and  bacon. 

"Ty-ler!    You'll  be  late!" 

A  mighty  stretch.  A  gathering  of  his  will  forces. 
A  swing  of  his  long  legs  over  the  side  of  the  bed  so  that 
they  described  an  arc  in  the  air. 

"Been  up  years." 

Breakfast  had  won. 

Until  he  came  to  the  Great  Central  Naval  Training 
Station  Tyler's  nearest  approach  to  the  nautical  life 
had  been  when,  at  the  age  of  six,  he  had  sailed  chips 
in  the  wash  tub  in  the  back  yard.  Marvin,  Texas , 
is  five  hundred  miles  inland.  And  yet  he  had  enlisted 
in  the  navy  as  inevitably  as  though  he  had  sprung 
from  a  long  line  of  Vikings.  In  his  boyhood  his  choice 
of  games  had  always  been  pirate.  You  saw  him,  a  red 


SHORE  LEAVE  335 

handkerchief  binding  his  brow,  one  foot  advanced,  knee 
bent,  scanning  the  horizon  for  the  treasure  island  from 
the  vantage  point  of  the  woodshed  roof,  while  the  crew, 
gone  mad  with  thirst,  snarled  and  shrieked  all  about 
him,  and  the  dirt  yard  below  became  a  hungry,  roaring 
sea.  His  twelve-year-old  vocabulary  boasted  such 
compound  difficulties  as  mizzentopsail-yard  and  main- 
topgallantmast.  He  knew  the  intricate  parts  of  a 
full-rigged  ship  from  the  mainsail  to  the  deck,  from  the 
jib-boom  to  the  chart-house.  All  this  from  pictures 
and  books.  It  was  the  roving,  restless  spirit  of  his 
father  in  him,  I  suppose.  Clint  Kamps  had  never  been 
meant  for  marriage.  When  the  baby  Tyler  was  one 
year  old  Clint  had  walked  over  to  where  his  wife 
sat,  the  child  in  her  lap,  and  had  tilted  her  head  back, 
kissed  her  on  the  lips,  and  had  gently  pinched  the  boy's 
roseleaf  cheek  with  a  quizzical  forefinger  and  thumb. 
Then,  indolently,  negligently,  gracefully,  he  had 
strolled  out  of  the  house,  down  the  steps,  into  the  hot 
and  dusty  street  and  so  on  and  on  and  out  of  their 
lives.  Stella  Kamps  had  never  seen  him  again.  Her 
letters  back  home  to  her  folks  in  Kansas  were  triumphs 
of  bravery  and  bare-faced  lying.  The  kind  of  bravery, 
and  the  kind  of  lying  that  only  a  woman  could  under- 
stand. She  managed  to  make  out,  somehow,  at  first. 
And  later,  very  well  indeed.  As  the  years  went  on  she 
and  the  boy  lived  together  in  a  sort  of  closed  corpora- 
tion paradise  of  their  own.  At  twenty-one  Tyler,  who 
had  gone  through  grammar  school,  high  school  and 


336  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

business  college  had  never  kissed  a  girl  or  felt  a  love- 
pang.  Stella  Kamps  kept  her  age  as  a  woman  does 
whose  brain  and  body  are  alert  and  busy.  When 
Tyler  first  went  to  work  in  the  Texas  State  Savings 
Bank  of  Marvin  the  girls  would  come  in  on  various 
pretexts  just  for  a  glimpse  of  his  charming  blondeur 
behind  the  little  cage  at  the  rear.  It  is  difficult  for  a 
small-town  girl  to  think  of  reasons  for  going  into  a 
bank.  You  have  to  be  moneyed  to  do  it.  They  say 
that  the  Da  vies  girl  saved  up  nickels  until  she  had  a 
dollar's  worth  and  then  came  into  the  bank  and  asked 
to  have  a  bill  in  exchange  for  it.  They  gave  her  one — 
a  crisp,  new,  crackly  dollar  bill.  She  reached  for  it, 
gropingly,  her  eyes  fixed  on  a  point  at  the  rear  of  the 
bank.  Two  days  later  she  came  in  and  brazenly 
asked  to  have  it  changed  into  nickels  again.  She 
might  have  gone  on  indefinitely  thus  if  Tyler's  country 
hadn't  given  him  something  more  important  to  do 
than  to  change  dollars  into  nickels  and  back  again. 

On  the  day  he  left  for  the  faraway  naval  training 
station  Stella  Kamps  for  the  second  time  in  her  life 
had  a  chance  to  show  the  stuff  she  was  made  of,  and 
showed  it.  Not  a  whimper.  Down  at  the  train,  stand- 
ing at  the  car  window,  looking  up  at  him  and  smiling, 
and  saying  futile,  foolish,  final  things,  and  seeing  only 
his  blond  head  among  the  many  thrust  out  of  the  open 
window. 

"...  and  Tyler,  remember  what  I  said  about 
your  feet.  You  know.  Dry.  .  .  .  And  I'll  send  a 


SHORE  LEAVE  337 

box  every  week,  only  don't  eat  too  many  of  the  nut 
cookies.  They're  so  rich.  Give  some  to  the  other — 
yes,  I  know  you  will.  I  was  just  .  .  .  Won't  it  be 
grand  to  be  right  there  on  the  water  all  the  time! 
My !  ...  I'll  write  every  night  and  then  send  it  twice 
a  week.  ...  I  don't  suppose  you  .  .  .  Well  once  a 
week,  won't  you,  dear?  .  .  .  You're — you're  moving. 

The  train's  going!    Good-b "  she  ran  along  with  it 

for  a  few  feet,  awkwardly,  as  a  woman  runs.  Stum- 
blingly. 

And  suddenly,  as  she  ran,  his  head  always  just  ahead 
of  her,  she  thought,  with  a  great  pang: 

"O  my  God,  how  young  he  is!  How  young  he  is, 
and  he  doesn't  know  anything.  I  should  have  told 
him.  .  .  .  Things.  .  .  .  He  doesn't  know  anything 
about  .  .  .  and  all  those  other  men ' 

She  ran  on,  one  arm  outstretched  as  though  to  hold 
him  a  moment  longer  while  the  train  gathered  speed. 
"Tyler!"  she  called,  through  the  din  and  shouting. 
" Tyler,  be  good!  Be  good!"  He  only  saw  her  lips 
moving,  and  could  not  hear,  so  he  nodded  his  head, 
and  smiled,  and  waved,  and  was  gone. 

So  Tyler  Kamps  had  travelled  up  to  Chicago.  When- 
ever they  passed  a  sizable  town  they  had  thrown 
open  the  windows  and  yelled,  "Youp!  Who-ee! 
Yow!" 

People  had  rushed  to  the  streets  and  had  stood  there 
gazing  after  the  train.  Tyler  hadn't  done  much  youp- 
ing  at  first,  but  in  the  later  stages  of  the  journey  he 


338  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

joined  in  to  keep  his  spirits  up.  He,  who  had  never 
been  more  than  a  two-hours7  ride  from  home  was 
flashing  past  villages,  towns,  cities — hundreds  of  them. 

The  first  few  days  had  been  unbelievably  bad,  what 
with  typhoid  inoculations,  smallpox  vaccinations,  and 
loneliness.  The  very  first  day,  when  he  had  entered 
his  barracks  one  of  the  other  boys,  older  in  experience, 
misled  by  Tyler's  pink  and  white  and  gold  colouring, 
had  leaned  forward  from  amongst  a  group  and  had 
called  in  glad  surprise,  at  the  top  of  a  leathery  pair  of 
lungs: 

"Why,  hello,  sweetheart!"  The  others  had  taken  it 
up  with  cruelty  of  their  age.  "Hello,  sweetheart!" 
It  had  stuck.  Sweetheart.  In  the  hard  years  that 
followed — years  in  which  the  blood-thirsty  and  piratical 
games  of  his  boyhood  paled  to  the  mildest  of  imaginings 
— the  nickname  still  clung,  long  after  he  had  ceased  to 
resent  it;  long  after  he  had  stripes  and  braid  to  refute 
it. 

But  in  that  Tyler  Kamps  we  are  not  interested.  It 
is  the  boy  Tyler  Kamps  with  whom  we  have  to  do. 
Bewildered,  lonely,  and  a  little  resentful.  Wondering 
where  the  sea  part  of  it  came  in.  Learning  to  say 
"on  the  station"  instead  of  "at  the  station,"  the  idea 
being  that  the  great  stretch  of  land  on  which  the 
station  was  located  was  not  really  land,  but  water; 
and  the  long  wooden  barracks  not  really  barracks  at 
all,  but  ships.  Learning  to  sleep  in  a  hammock  (it 
took  him  a  full  week).  Learning  to  pin  back  his 


SHORE  LEAVE  339 

sailor  collar  to  save  soiling  the  white  braid  on  it  (that 
meant  scrubbing).  Learning — but  why  go  into  detail? 
One  sentence  covers  it. 

Tyler  met  Gunner  Moran.  Moran,  tattooed,  hairy- 
armed,  hairy-chested  as  a  gorilla  and  with  something 
of  the  sadness  and  humour  of  the  gorilla  in  his  long 
upper  lip  and  short  forehead.  But  his  eyes  did  not 
bear  out  the  resemblance.  An  Irish  blue;  bright, 
unravaged;  clear  beacon  lights  in  a  rough  and  storm- 
battered  countenance.  Gunner  Moran  wasn't  a  gunner 
at  all,  or  even  a  gunner's  mate,  but  just  a  seaman 
who  knew  the  sea  from  Shanghai  to  New  Orleans; 
from  Liverpool  to  Barcelona.  His  knowledge  of  knots 
and  sails  and  rifles  and  bayonets  and  fists  was  a  thing 
to  strike  you  dumb.  He  wasn't  the  stuff  of  which  offi- 
cers are  made.  But  you  should  have  seen  him  with 
a  Springfield!  Or  a  bayonet!  A  bare  twenty-five, 
Moran,  but  with  ten  years'  sea  experience.  Into  those 
ten  years  he  had  jammed  a  lifetime  of  adventure. 
And  he  could  do  expertly  all  the  things  that  Tyler 
Kamps  did  amateurishly.  In  a  barrack,  or  in  a  com- 
pany street,  the  man  who  talks  the  loudest  is  the  man 
who  has  the  most  influence.  In  Tyler's  barrack 
Gunner  Moran  was  that  man. 

Because  of  what  he  knew  they  gave  him  two  hundred 
men  at  a  time  and  made  him  company  commander, 
without  insignia  or  official  position.  In  rank,  he  was 
only  a  "gob"  like  the  rest  of  them.  In  influence  a 
captain.  Moran  knew  how  to  put  the  weight  lunge 


340  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

behind  the  bayonet.  It  was  a  matter  of  balance,  of 
poise,  more  than  of  muscle. 

Up  in  the  front  of  his  men,  "G'wan,"  he  would  yell. 
"Whatddye  think  you're  doin'!  Tickling  'em  with  a 
straw!  That's  a  bayonet  you  got  there,  not  a  tennis 
rackit.  You  couldn't  scratch  your  initials  on  a  Fritz 
that  way.  Put  a  little  guts  into  it.  Now  then!" 

He  had  been  used  to  the  old  Krag,  with  a  cam  that 
jerked  out,  and  threw  back,  and  fed  one  shell  at  a  time. 
The  new  Springfield,  that  was  a  gloriously  functioning 
thing  in  its  simplicity,  he  regarded  with  a  sort  of 
reverence  and  ecstasy  mingled.  As  his  fingers  slid 
lightly,  caressingly  along  the  shining  barrel  they  were 
like  a  man's  fingers  lingering  on  the  soft  curves  of  a 
woman's  throat.  The  sight  of  a  rookie  handling  this 
metal  sweetheart  clumsily  filled  him  with  fury. 

"Whatcha  think  you  got  there,  you  lubber,  you! 
A  section  o'  lead  pipe!  You  ought  t'  be  back  carryin' 
a  shovel,  where  you  belong.  Here.  Just  a  touch. 
Like  that.  See?  Easy  now." 

He  could  box  like  a  professional.  They  put  him  up 
against  Slovatsky,  the  giant  Russian,  one  day.  Slovat- 
sky  put  up  his  two  huge  hands,  like  hams,  and  his 
great  arms,  like  iron  beams  and  looked  down  on  this 
lithe,  agile  bantam  that  was  hopping  about  at  his 
feet.  Suddenly  the  bantam  crouched,  sprang,  and  re- 
coiled like  a  steel  trap.  Something  had  crashed  up 
against  Slovatsky's  chin.  Red  rage  shook  him.  He 
raised  his  sledge-hammer  right  for  a  slashing  blow. 


SHORE  LEAVE  341 

Moran  was  directly  in  the  path  of  it.  It  seemed  that 
he  could  no  more  dodge  it  than  he  could  hope  to  escape 
an  onrushing  locomotive,  but  it  landed  on  empty  air, 
with  Moran  around  in  back  of  the  Russian,  and  peering 
impishly  up  under  his  arm.  It  was  like  an  elephant 
worried  by  a  mosquito.  Then  Moran's  lightning 
right  shot  out  again,  smartly,  and  seemed  just  to  tap 
the  great  hulk  on  the  side  of  the  chin.  A  ludicrous 
look  of  surprise  on  Slovatsky's  face  before  he  crumpled 
and  crashed. 

This  man  it  was  who  had  Tyler  Kamps'  admiration. 
It  was  more  than  admiration.  It  was  nearer  adoration. 
But  there  was  nothing  unnatural  or  unwholesome 
about  the  boy's  worship  of  this  man.  It  was  a  legiti- 
mate thing,  born  of  all  his  fatherless  years;  years  in 
which  there  had  been  no  big  man  around  the  house 
who  could  throw  farther  than  Tyler,  and  eat  more,  and 
wear  larger  shoes  and  offer  more  expert  opinion.  Moran 
accepted  the  boy's  homage  with  a  sort  of  surly  gra- 
ciousness. 

In  Tyler's  third  week  at  the  Naval  Station  mumps 
developed  in  his  barracks  and  they  were  quarantined. 
Tyler  escaped  the  epidemic  but  he  had  to  endure  the 
boredom  of  weeks  of  quarantine.  At  first  they  took 
it  as  a  lark,  like  schoolboys.  Moran's  hammock  was 
just  next  Tyler's.  On  his  other  side  was  a  young 
Kentuckian  named  Dabney  Courtney.  The  barracks 
had  dubbed  him  Monicker  the  very  first  day.  Monicker 
had  a  rather  surprising  tenor  voice.  Moran  a  salty 


342  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

bass.  And  Tyler  his  mandolin.  The  trio  did  much  to 
make  life  bearable,  or  unbearable,  depending  on  one's 
musical  knowledge  and  views.  The  boys  all  sang  a 
great  deal.  They  bawled  everything  they  knew,  from 
"Oh,  You  Beautiful  Doll"  and  "Over  There"  to 
"The  End  of  a  Perfect  Day."  The  latter,  ad  nauseum. 
They  even  revived  "Just  Break  the  News  to  Mother" 
and  seemed  to  take  a  sort  of  awful  joy  in  singing  its 
dreary  words  and  mournful  measures.  They  played 
everything  from  a  saxophone  to  a  harmonica.  They 
read.  They  talked.  And  they  grew  so  sick  of  the  sight 
of  one  another  that  they  began  to  snap  and  snarl. 

Sometimes  they  gathered  round  Moran  and  he  told 
them  tales  they  only  half  believed.  He  had  been  in 
places  whose  very  names  were  exotic  and  oriental, 
breathing  of  sandalwood,  and  myrrh,  and  spices  and 
aloes.  They  were  places  over  which  a  boy  dreams  in 
books  of  travel.  Moran  bared  the  vivid  tattooing 
on  hairy  arms  and  chest — tattooing  representing 
anchors,  and  serpents,  and  girls'  heads,  and  hearts 
with  arrows  stuck  through  them.  Each  mark  had  its 
story.  A  broad-swathed  gentleman  indeed,  Gunner 
Moran.  He  had  an  easy  way  with  him  that  made  you 
feel  provincial  and  ashamed.  It  made  you  ashamed 
of  not  knowing  the  sort  of  thing  you  used  to  be  ashamed 
of  knowing. 

Visiting  day  was  the  worst.  They  grew  savage, 
somehow,  watching  the  mothers  and  sisters  and  cousins 
and  sweethearts  go  streaming  by  to  the  various  bar- 


SHORE   LEAVE  343 

racks.  One  of  the  boys  to  whom  Tyler  had  never 
even  spoken  suddenly  took  a  picture  out  of  his  blouse 
pocket  and  showed  it  to  Tyler.  It  was  a  cheap  little 
picture — one  of  the  kind  they  sell  two  for  a  quarter 
if  one  sitter;  two  for  thirty-five  if  two.  This  was 
a  twosome.  The  boy,  and  a  girl.  A  healthy,  wide- 
awake wholesome  looking  small-town  girl,  who  has 
gone  through  high  school  and  cuts  out  her  own  shirt- 
waists. 

"She's  vice-president  of  the  Silver  Star  Pleasure 
Club  back  home,"  the  boy  confided  to  Tyler.  "I'm 
president.  We  meet  every  other  Saturday." 

Tyler  looked  at  the  picture  seriously  and  approvingly. 
Suddenly  he  wished  that  he  had,  tucked  away  in  his 
blouse,  a  picture  of  a  clear-eyed,  round-cheeked  vice- 
president  of  a  pleasure  club.  He  took  out  his  mother's 
picture  and  showed  it. 

"Oh,  yeh,"  said  the  boy,  disinterestedly. 

The  dragging  weeks  came  to  an  end.  The  night  of 
Tyler's  restlessness  was  the  last  night  of  quarantine. 
To-morrow  morning  they  would  be  free.  At  the  end 
of  the  week  they  were  to  be  given  shore  leave.  Tyler 
had  made  up  his  mind  to  go  to  Chicago.  He  had  never 
been  there. 

Five  thirty.    Reveille. 

Tyler  awoke  with  the  feeling  that  something  was 
going  to  happen.  Something  pleasant.  Then  he 
remembered,  and  smiled.  Dabney  Courtney,  in  the 
next  hammock,  was  leaning  far  over  the  side  of  his 


344  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

perilous  perch  and  delivering  himself  of  his  morning 
speech.  Tyler  did  not  quite  understand  this  young 
southern  elegant.  Monicker  had  two  moods,  both  of 
which  puzzled  Tyler.  When  he  awoke  feeling  gay  he 
would  lean  over  the  extreme  edge  of  his  hammock  and 
drawl,  with  an  affected  English  accent: 

"If  this  is  Venice,  where  are  the  canals?" 

In  his  less  cheerful  moments  he  would  groan,  heavily, 
"There  ain't  no  Gawd!" 

This  last  had  been  his  morning  observation  during 
their  many  weeks  of  durance  vile.  But  this  morning 
he  was,  for  the  first  time  in  many  days,  enquiring 
about  Venetian  waterways. 

Tyler  had  no  pal.  His  years  of  companionship  with 
his  mother  had  bred  in  him  a  sort  of  shyness,  a  diffi- 
dence. He  heard  the  other  boys  making  plans  for 
shore  leave.  They  all  scorned  Waukegan,  which  was 
the  first  sizable  town  beyond  the  Station.  Chicago 
was  their  goal.  They  were  like  a  horde  of  play-hungry 
devils  after  their  confinement.  Six  weeks  of  restricted 
freedom,  six  weeks  of  stored-up  energy  made  them 
restive  as  colts. 

"Coin'  to  Chicago,  kid?"  Moran  asked  him,  care- 
lessly. It  was  Saturday  morning. 

"Yes.    Are  you?"  eagerly. 

"Kin  a  duck  swim?" 

At  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  they  had  given  him  tickets  to 
various  free  amusements  and  entertainments.  They 
told  him  about  free  canteens,  and  about  other  places 


SHORE   LEAVE  345 

where  you  could  get  a  good  meal,  cheap.  One  of  the 
tickets  was  for  a  dance.  Tyler  knew  nothing  of  dancing. 
This  dance  was  to  be  given  at  some  kind  of  woman's 
club  on  Michigan  Boulevard.  Tyler  read  the  card, 
glumly.  A  dance  meant  girls.  He  knew  that.  Why 
hadn't  he  learned  to  dance? 

Tyler  walked  down  to  the  station  and  waited  for  the 
train  that  would  bring  him  to  Chicago  at  about  one 
o'clock.  The  other  boys,  in  little  groups,  or  in  pairs, 
were  smoking  and  talking.  Tyler  wanted  to  join  them, 
but  he  did  not.  They  seemed  so  sufficient  unto 
themselves,  with  their  plans,  and  their  glib  knowledge 
of  places,  and  amusements,  and  girls.  On  the  train 
they  all  bought  sweets  from  the  train  butcher — 
chocolate  maraschinos,  and  nut  bars,  and  molasses 
kisses — and  ate  them  as  greedily  as  children,  until 
their  hunger  for  sweets  was  surfeited. 

Tyler  found  himself  in  the  same  car  with  Moran. 
He  edged  over  to  a  seat  near  him,  watching  him  nar- 
rowly. Moran  was  not  mingling  with  the  other  boys. 
He  kept  aloof,  his  sea-blue  eyes  gazing  out  at  the  flat 
Illinois  prairie.  All  about  him  swept  and  eddied  the 
currents  and  counter-currents  of  talk. 

"They  say  there's  a  swell  supper  in  the  Tower  Build- 
ing for  fifty  cents." 

"  Fifty  nothing.  Get  all  you  want  in  the  Library 
eanteen  for  nix." 

"  Where's  this  dance,  huh?" 

"  Search  me" 


346  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

"Heh,  Murph!  I'll  shoot  you  a  game  of  pool  at  the 
club." 

"Naw,  I  gotta  date." 

Tyler's  glance  encountered  Moran's,  and  rested 
there.  Scorn  curled  the  Irishman's  broad  upper  lip. 
"Navy!  This  ain't  no  navy  no  more.  It's  a  Sunday 
school,  that's  what!  Phonographs,  an'  church  suppers, 
an'  pool  an'  dances!  It's  enough  t'  turn  a  fella's 
stomick.  Lot  of  Sunday  school  kids  don't  know  a  sail 
from  a  tablecloth  when  they  see  it." 

He  relapsed  into  contemptuous  silence. 

Tyler,  who  but  a  moment  before  had  been  envying 
them  their  familiarity  with  these  very  things  now  nod- 
ded and  smiled  understandingly  at  Moran.  "  That's 
right,"  he  said.  Moran  regarded  him  a  moment, 
curiously.  Then  he  resumed  his  staring  out  of  the 
window.  You  would  never  have  guessed  that  in  that 
bullet  head  there  was  bewilderment  and  resentment 
almost  equalling  Tyler's,  but  for  a  much  different  rea- 
son. Gunner  Moran  was  of  the  old  navy — the  navy 
that  had  been  despised  and  spat  upon.  In  those  days 
his  uniform  alone  had  barred  him  from  decent  theatres, 
decent  halls,  decent  dances,  contact  with  decent  people. 
They  had  forced  him  to  a  knowledge  of  the  burlesque 
houses,  the  cheap  theatres,  the  shooting  galleries,  the 
saloons,  the  dives.  And  now,  bewilderingly,  the  public 
had  right-about  faced.  It  opened  its  doors  to  him. 
It  closed  its  saloons  to  him.  It  sought  him  out.  It 
offered  him  amusement.  It  invited  him  to  its  home, 


SHORE  LEAVE  347 

and  sat  him  down  at  its  table,  and  introduced  him  to 
its  daughter. 

"Nix!"  said  Gunner  Moran,  and  spat  between  his 
teeth.  "Notfrme.  I  pick  me  own  lady  friends." 

Gunner  Moran  was  used  to  picking  his  own  lady 
friends.  He  had  picked  them  in  wicked  Port  Said, 
and  in  Fiume;  in  Yokohama  and  Naples.  He  had 
picked  them  unerringly,  and  to  his  taste,  in  Cardiff, 
and  Hamburg,  and  Vladivostok. 

When  the  train  drew  in  at  the  great  Northwestern 
station  shed  he  was  down  the  steps  and  up  the  long 
platform  before  the  wheels  had  ceased  revolving. 

Tyler  came  down  the  steps  slowly.  Blue  uniforms 
were  streaming  past  him — a  flood  of  them.  White 
leggings  twinkled  with  the  haste  of  their  wearers.  Caps, 
white  or  blue,  flowed  like  a  succession  of  rippling  waves 
and  broke  against  the  great  doorway,  and  were  gone. 

In  Tyler's  town,  back  home  in  Marvin,  Texas,  you 
knew  the  train  numbers  and  their  schedules,  and  you 
spoke  of  them  by  name,  familiarly  and  affectionately, 
as  Number  Eleven  and  Number  Fifty-five.  "I  reckon 
Fifty-five'll  be  late  to-day,  on  account  of  the  storm." 

Now  he  saw  half  a  dozen  trains  lined  up  at  once,  and 
a  dozen  more  tracks  waiting,  empty.  The  great  train 
shed  awed  him.  The  vast  columned  waiting  room,  the 
hurrying  people,  the  uniformed  guards  gave  him  a 
feeling  of  personal  unimportance.  He  felt  very  neg- 
ligible, and  useless,  and  alone.  He  stood,  a  rather 
dazed  blue  figure,  in  the  vastness  of  that  shining  place. 


34§  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

A  voice — the  soft,  cadenced  voice  of  the  negro — 
addressed  him. 

"Lookin'  fo'  de  sailors'  club  rooms?" 

Tyler  turned.  A  toothy,  middle-aged,  kindly  negro 
in  a  uniform  and  red  cap.  Tyler  smiled  friendlily. 
Here  was  a  human  he  could  feel  at  ease  with.  Texas 
was  full  of  just  such  faithful,  friendly  types  of  negro. 

"Reckon  I  am,  uncle.    Show  me  the  way?" 

Red  Cap  chuckled  and  led  the  way.  "  Knew  you  was 
fom  de  south  minute  Ah  see  yo'.  Cain't  fool  me. 
Le'ssee  now.  You-all  fom ?" 

"I'm  from  the  finest  state  in  the  Union.  The  most 
glorious  state  in  the 

"H'm— Texas,"  grinned  Red  Cap. 

"How  did  you  know!" 

"Ah  done  heah  'em  talk  befoh,  son.  Ah  done  heah 
'em  talk  be-foh." 

It  was  a  long  journey  through  the  great  building  to 
the  section  that  had  been  set  aside  for  Tyler  and  boys 
like  him.  Tyler  wondered  how  any  one  could  ever 
find  it  alone.  When  the  Red  Cap  left  him,  after  show- 
ing him  the  wash  rooms,  the  tubs  for  scrubbing  clothes, 
the  steam  dryers,  the  bath-tubs,  the  lunch  room, 
Tyler  looked  after  him  regretfully.  Then  he  sped 
after  him  and  touched  him  on  the  arm. 

"Listen.  Could  I — would  they — do  you  mean  I 
could  clean  up  in  there — as  much  as  I  wanted?  And 
wash  my  things?  And  take  a  bath  in  a  bathtub,  with 
all  the  hot  water  I  want?" 


SHORE  LEAVE  349 

"  Yo'  sho'  kin.  On'y  things  look  mighty  grabby  now. 
Always  is  Sat'days.  Jes'  wait  aroun'  an'  grab  yo'  tu'n." 

Tyler  waited.  And  while  he  waited  he  watched  to 
see  how  the  other  boys  did  things.  He  saw  how  they 
scrubbed  their  uniforms  with  scrubbing  brushes,  and 
plenty  of  hot  water  and  soap.  He  saw  how  they 
hung  them  carefully,  so  that  they  might  not  wrinkle, 
in  the  dryers.  He  saw  them  emerge,  glowing,  from  the 
tub  rooms.  And  he  waited,  the  fever  of  cleanliness 
burning  in  his  eye. 

His  turn  came.  He  had  waited  more  than  an  hour, 
reading,  listening  to  the  phonograph  and  the  electric 
piano,  and  watching. 

Now  he  saw  his  chance  and  seized  it.  And  then  he 
went  through  a  ceremony  that  was  almost  a  ritual. 
Stella  Kamps,  could  she  have  seen  it,  would  have  felt 
repaid  for  all  her  years  of  soap-and-water  insistence. 

First  he  washed  out  the  stationary  tub  with  soap, 
and  brush,  and  scalding  water.  Then  he  scalded  the 
brush.  Then  the  tub  again.  Then,  deliberately,  and 
with  the  utter  unconcern  of  the  male  biped  he  divested 
himself,  piece  by  piece,  of  every  stitch  of  covering 
wherewith  his  body  was  clothed.  And  he  scrubbed  them 
all.  He  took  off  his  white  leggings  and  his  white  cap 
and  scrubbed  those,  first.  He  had  seen  the  other 
boys  follow  that  order  of  procedure.  Then  his  flapping 
blue  flannel  trousers,  and  his  blouse.  Then  his  under- 
clothes, and  his  socks.  And  finally  he  stood  there, 
naked  and  unabashed,  slim,  and  pink  and  silver  as  a 


350  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

mountain  trout.  His  face,  as  he  bent  over  the  steamy 
tub,  was  very  red,  and  moist  and  earnest.  His  yellow 
hair  curled  in  little  damp  ringlets  about  his  brow.  Then 
he  hung  his  trousers  and  blouse  in  the  dryers  without 
wringing  them  (wringing,  he  had  been  told,  wrinkled 
them).  He  rinsed  and  wrung,  and  flapped  the  under- 
clothes, though,  and  shaped  his  cap  carefully,  and 
spread  his  leggings,  and  hung  those  in  the  dryer,  too. 
And  finally,  with  a  deep  sigh  of  accomplishment,  he 
filled  one  of  the  bathtubs  in  the  adjoining  room — filled 
it  to  the  slopping-over  point  with  the  luxurious  hot 
water,  and  he  splashed  about  in  this,  and  reclined  in 
it,  gloriously,  until  the  waiting  ones  threatened  to 
pull  him  out.  Then  he  dried  himself  and  issued  forth 
all  flushed  and  rosy.  He  wrapped  himself  in  a  clean 
coarse  sheet,  for  his  clothes  would  not  be  dry  for  another 
half  hour.  Swathed  in  the  sheet  like  a  Roman  senator 
he  lay  down  on  one  of  the  green  velvet  couches,  relics 
of  past  Pullman  glories,  and  there,  with  the  rumble 
and  roar  of  steel  trains  overhead,  with  the  smart  click 
of  the  billiard  balls  sounding  in  his  ears,  with  the  phono- 
graph and  the  electric  piano  going  full  blast,  with  the 
boys  dancing  and  larking  all  about  the  big  room,  he 
fell  sound  asleep  as  only  a  boy  cub  can  sleep. 

When  he  awoke  an  hour  later  his  clothes  were  folded 
in  a  neat  pile  by  the  deft  hand  of  some  Jackie  impatient 
to  use  the  drying  space  for  his  own  garments.  Tyler 
put  them  on.  He  stood  before  a  mirror  and  brushed 
his  hair  until  it  glittered.  He  drew  himself  up  with 


SHORE  LEAVE  351 

the  instinctive  pride  and  self  respect  that  comes  of 
fresh  clean  clothes  against  the  skin.  Then  he  placed 
his  absurd  round  hat  on  his  head  at  what  he  considered 
a  fetching  angle,  though  precarious,  and  sallied  forth 
on  the  streets  of  Chicago  in  search  of  amusement  and 
adventure. 

He  found  them. 

Madison  and  Canal  streets,  west,  had  little  to  offer 
him.  He  sensed  that  the  centre  of  things  lay  to  the 
east,  so  he  struck  out  along  Madison,  trying  not  to 
show  the  terror  with  which  the  grim,  roaring,  clamorous 
city  filled  him.  He  jingled  the  small  coins  in  his  pocket 
and  strode  along,  on  the  surface  a  blithe  and  carefree 
Jackie  on  shore  leave;  a  forlorn  and  lonely  Texas  boy, 
beneath. 

It  was  late  afternoon.  His  laundering,  his  ablutions 
and  his  nap  had  taken  more  time  than  he  had  realised. 
It  was  a  mild  spring  day,  with  just  a  Lake  Michigan 
evening  snap  in  the  air.  Tyler,  glancing  about  alertly, 
nevertheless  felt  dreamy,  and  restless,  and  sort  of  melt- 
ing, like  a  snow-heap  in  the  sun.  He  wished  he  had 
some  one  to  talk  to.  He  thought  of  the  man  on  the 
train  who  had  said,  with  such  easy  confidence,  "I 
got  a  date."  Tyler  wished  that  he  too  had  a  date — 
he  who  had  never  had  a  rendezvous  in  his  life.  He 
loitered  a  moment  on  the  bridge.  Then  he  went  on, 
looking  about  him  interestedly,  and  comparing  Chicago, 
Illinois,  with  Marvin,  Texas,  and  finding  the  former 
sadly  lacking.  He  passed  LaSalle,  Clark.  The  streets 


352  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

were  packed.  The  noise  and  rush  tired  him,  and 
bewildered  him.  He  came  to  a  moving  picture  theatre 
— one  of  the  many  that  dot  the  district.  A  girl  occupied 
the  little  ticket  kiosk.  She  was  rather  a  frowsy  girl, 
not  too  young,  and  with  a  certain  look  about  the  jaw. 
Tyler  walked  up  to  the  window  and  shoved  his  money 
through  the  little  aperture.  The  girl  fed  him  a  pink 
ticket  without  looking  up.  He  stood  there  looking  at 
her.  Then  he  asked  her  a  question.  "How  long  does 
the  show  take?"  He  wanted  to  see  the  colour  of  her 
eyes.  He  wanted  her  to  talk  to  him. 

"'Bout  a  hour,"  said  the  girl,  and  raised  wise  eyes 
to  his. 

"Thanks,"  said  Tyler,  fervently,  and  smiled.  No 
answering  smile  curved  the  lady's  lips.  Tyler  turned 
and  went  in.  There  was  an  alleged  comic  film.  Tyler 
was  not  amused.  It  was  followed  by  a  war  picture. 
He  left  before  the  show  was  over.  He  was  very  hungry 
by  now.  In  his  blouse  pocket  were  the  various  infor- 
mation and  entertainment  tickets  with  which  the 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  man  had  provided  him.  He  had  taken  them 
out,  carefully,  before  he  had  done  his  washing.  Now 
he  looked  them  over.  But  a  dairy  lunch  room  invited 
him,  with  its  white  tiling,  and  its  pans  of  baked  apples, 
and  browned  beans  and  its  coffee  tank.  He  went  in  and 
ate  a  solitary  supper  that  was  heavy  on  pie  and  cake. 

When  he  came  out  to  the  street  again  it  was  evening. 
He  walked  over  to  State  Street  (the  wrong  side). 
He  took  the  dance  card  out  of  his  pocket  and  looked 


SHORE  LEAVE  353 

at  it  again.  If  only  he  had  learned  to  dance.  There'd 
be  girls.  There'd  have  to  be  girls  at  a  dance.  He 
stood  staring  into  the  red  and  tin-foil  window  display 
of  a  cigar  store,  turning  the  ticket  over  in  his  fingers, 
and  the  problem  over  in  his  mind. 

Suddenly,  in  his  ear,  a  woman's  voice,  very  soft 
and  low.  "Hello,  Sweetheart!"  the  voice  said.  His 
nickname !  He  whirled  around,  eagerly. 

The  girl  was  a  stranger  to  him.  But  she  was  smiling, 
friendlily,  and  she  was  pretty,  too,  sort  of.  "Hello, 
Sweetheart!"  she  said,  again. 

"  Why,  how-do,  ma'am,"  said  Tyler,  Texas  fashion. 

"Where  you  going,  kid?"  she  asked. 

Tyler  blushed  a  little.  "Well,  nowhere  in  particular, 
ma'am.  Just  kind  of  milling  around." 

"  Come  on  along  with  me,"  she  said,  and  linked  her 
arm  in  his. 

"Why— why— thanks,  but " 

And  yet  Texas  people  were  always  saying  easterners 
weren't  friendly.  He  felt  a  little  uneasy,  though,  as 
he  looked  down  into  her  smiling  face.  Something— 

"Hello,  Sweetheart!"  said  a  voice,  again.  A  man's 
voice,  this  time.  Out  of  the  cigar  store  came  Gunner 
Moran,  the  yellow  string  of  a  tobacco  bag  sticking  out 
of  his  blouse  pocket,  a  freshly  rolled  cigarette  between 
his  lips. 

A  queer  feeling  of  relief  and  gladness  swept  over 
Tyler.  And  then  Moran  looked  sharply  at  the  girl 
and  said,  "Why,  hello,  Blanche!" 


354  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

"  Hello  yourself,"  answered  the  girl,  sullenly. 

"Thought  you  was  in  'Frisco." 

"Well,  I  ain't." 

Moran  shifted  his  attention  from  the  girl  to  Tyler. 
"Friend  o'  yours?" 

Before  Tyler  could  open  his  lips  to  answer  the  girl 
put  in,  "Sure  he  is.  Sure  I  am.  We  been  around  to- 
gether all  afternoon." 

Tyler  jerked.  "Why,  ma'am,  I  guess  you've  made 
a  mistake.  I  never  saw  you  before  in  my  life.  I  kind 
of  thought  when  you  up  and  spoke  to  me  you  must 
be  taking  me  for  somebody  else.  Well,  now,  isn't 
that  funny " 

The  smile  faded  from  the  girl's  face,  and  it  became 
twisted  with  fury.  She  glared  at  Moran,  her  lips  drawn 
back  in  a  snarl.  "Who're  you  to  go  buttin'  into  my 
business !  This  guy's  a  friend  of  mine,  I  tell  yuh !" 

"Yeh?  Well,  he's  a  friend  of  mine,  too.  Me  an' 
him  had  a  date  to  meet  here  right  now  and  we're  goin' 
over  to  a  swell  little  dance  on  Michigan  Avenoo.  So 
it's  you  who's  buttin'  in,  Blanche,  me  girl." 

The  girl  stood  twisting  her  handkerchief  savagely. 
She  was  panting  a  little.  "I'll  get  you  for  this." 

"Beat  it!"  said  Moran.  He  tucked  his  arm  through 
Tyler's,  with  a  little  impelling  movement,  and  Tyler 
found  himself  walking  up  the  street  at  a  smart  gait, 
leaving  the  girl  staring  after  them. 

Tyler  Kamps  was  an  innocent,  but  he  was  not  a 
fool.  At  what  he  had  vaguely  guessed  a  moment  before, 


SHORE   LEAVE  355 

he  now  knew.  They  walked  along  in  silence,  the 
most  ill-sorted  pair  that  you  might  hope  to  find  in  all 
that  higgledy-piggledy  city.  And  yet  with  a  new, 
strong  bond  between  them.  It  was  more  than  frater- 
nal. It  had  something  of  the  character  of  the  feeling 
that  exists  between  a  father  and  son  who  understand 
each  other. 

Man-like,  they  did  not  talk  of  that  which  they  were 
thinking. 

Tyler  broke  the  silence. 

"Do  you  dance?" 

"Me!  Dance!  Well,  I've  mixed  with  everything 
from  hula  dancers  to  geisha  girls,  not  forgettin'  the 
Barbary  Coast  in  the  old  days,  but — well,  I  ain't 
what  you'd  rightly  call  a  dancer.  Why  you  askin'?" 

"Because  I  can't  dance,  either.  But  we'll  just  go 
up  and  see  what  it's  like,  anyway." 

"  See  wot  wot's  like?" 

Tyler  took  out  his  card  again,  patiently.  "This 
dance  we're  going  to." 

They  had  reached  the  Michigan  Avenue  address 
given  on  the  card,  and  Tyler  stopped  to  look  up  at  the 
great,  brightly  lighted  building.  Moran  stopped  too, 
but  for  a  different  reason.  He  was  staring,  open- 
mouthed,  at  Tyler  Kamps. 

"You  mean  t'  say  you  thought  I  was  goin' " 

He  choked.  "Oh,  my  Gawd!" 

Tyler  smiled  at  him,  sweetly.  "I'm  kind  of  scared, 
too.  But  Monicker  goes  to  these  dances  and  he  says 


356  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

they're  right  nice.  And  lots  of — of  pretty  girls.  Nice 
girls.  I  wouldn't  go  alone.  But  you — you're  used  to 
dancing,  and  parties  and — girls." 

He  linked  his  arm  through  the  other  man's.  Moran 
allowed  himself  to  be  propelled  along,  dazedly.  Still 
protesting,  he  found  himself  in  the  elevator  with  a 
dozen  red-cheeked,  scrubbed-looking  jackies.  At  which 
point  Moran,  game  in  the  face  of  horror,  accepted  the 
inevitable.  He  gave  a  characteristic  jerk  from  the 
belt. 

"Me,  I'll  try  anything  oncet.    Lead  me  to  it." 

The  elevator  stopped  at  the  ninth  floor.  "Out  here 
for  the  jackies'  dance,"  said  the  elevator  boy. 

The  two  stepped  out  with  the  others.  Stepped  out 
gingerly,  caps  in  hand.  A  corridor  full  of  women. 
A  corridor  a-flutter  with  girls.  Talk.  Laughter. 
Animation.  In  another  moment  the  two  would  have 
turned  and  fled,  terrified.  But  in  that  half-moment 
of  hesitation  and  bewilderment  they  were  lost. 

A  woman  approached  them  hand  outstretched.  A 
tall,  slim,  friendly  looking  woman,  low-voiced,  silk- 
gowned,  inquiring. 

"  Good-evening  1"  she  said,  as  if  she  had  been  haunt- 
ing the  halls  in  the  hope  of  their  coming.  "I'm  glad 
to  see  you.  You  can  check  your  caps  right  there.  Do 
you  dance?" 

Two  scarlet  faces.  Four  great  hands  twisting  at  white 
caps  in  an  agony  of  embarrassment.  "Why,  no 


ma'am." 


SHORE   LEAVE  357 

"That's  fine.  Well  teach  you.  Then  you'll  go  into 
the  ball  room  and  have  a  wonderful  time." 

"But—    -"  in  choked  accents  from  Moran. 

"  Just  a  minute.  Miss  Hall !"  She  beckoned  a  dimin- 
utive blonde  in  blue.  "Miss  Hall,  this  is  Mr. — ah — • 
Mr.  Moran.  Thanks.  And  Mr.? — yes — Mr.  Kamps. 
Tyler  Kamps.  They  want  to  learn  to  dance.  I'll  turn 
them  right  over  to  you.  When  does  your  class  begin?" 

Miss  Hall  glanced  at  a  toy  watch  on  the  tiny  wrist. 
Instinctively  and  helplessly  Moran  and  Tyler  focused 
their  gaze  on  the  dials  that  bound  their  red  wrists. 
"Starting  right  now,"  said  Miss  Hall,  crisply.  She 
eyed  the  two  men  with  calm  appraising  gaze.  "I'm 
sure  you'll  both  make  wonderful  dancers.  Follow  me." 

She  turned.  There  was  something  confident,  daunt- 
less, irresistible  about  the  straight  little  back.  The 
two  men  stared  at  it.  Then  at  each  other.  Panic  was 
writ  large  on  the  face  of  each.  Panic,  and  mutiny. 
Flight  was  hi  the  mind  of  both.  Miss  Hall  turned, 
smiled,  held  out  a  small  white  hand.  "Come  on," 
she  said.  "Follow  me." 

And  the  two,  as  though  hypnotised,  followed. 

A  fair-sized  room,  with  a  piano  hi  one  corner  and 
groups  of  fidgeting  jackies  in  every  other  corner. 
Moran  and  Tyler  sighed  with  relief  at  sight  of  them. 
At  least  they  were  not  to  be  alone  in  their  agony. 

Miss  Hall  wasted  no  time.  Slim  ankles  close  together, 
head  held  high,  she  stood  in  the  centre  of  the  room. 
"Now  then,  form  a  circle  please!" 


358  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

Twenty  six-foot,  well-built  specimens  of  manhood 
suddenly  became  shambling  hulks.  They  clumped 
forward,  breathing  hard,  and  smiling  mirthlessly, 
with  an  assumption  of  ease  that  deceived  no  one,  least 
of  all,  themselves.  "A  little  lively,  please.  Don't 
look  so  scared.  I'm  not  a  bit  vicious.  Now  then,  Miss 
Weeks!  A  fox  trot." 

Miss  Weeks,  at  the  piano,  broke  into  spirited  strains. 
The  first  faltering  steps  in  the  social  career  of  Gunner 
Moran  and  Tyler  Kamps  had  begun. 

To  an  onlooker,  it  might  have  been  mirth-provoking 
if  it  hadn't  been,  somehow,  tear-compelling.  The  thing 
that  little  Miss  Hall  was  doing  might  have  seemed 
trivial  to  one  who  did  not  know  that  it  was  magnifi- 
cent. It  wasn't  dancing  merely  that  she  was  teaching 
these  awkward,  serious,  frightened  boys.  She  was 
handing  them  a  key  that  would  unlock  the  social 
graces.  She  was  presenting  them  with  a  magic  some- 
thing that  would  later  act  as  an  open  sesame  to  a 
hundred  legitimate  delights. 

She  was  strictly  business,  was  Miss  Hall.  No 
nonsense  about  her.  "  One- two- three-four !  And  a 
one-two  three-tour.  One- two- three-four!  And  a  turn- 
two,  turn-iouxl  Now  then,  all  together.  Just  four 
straight  steps  as  if  you  were  walking  down  the  street. 
That's  it!  One- two-three-four!  Don't  look  at  me. 
Look  at  my  feet.  And  a  one-two  three-iour." 

Red-faced,  they  were.  Very  earnest.  Pathetically 
eager  and  docile.  Weeks  of  drilling  had  taught  them  to 


SHORE  LEAVE  359 

obey  commands.  To  them  the  little  dancing  teacher 
whose  white  spats  twinkled  so  expertly  in  the  tangle 
of  their  own  clumsy  clumping  boots  was  more  than  a 
pretty  girl.  She  was  knowledge.  She  was  power. 
She  was  the  commanding  officer.  And  like  children 
they  obeyed. 

Moran's  Barbary  Coast  experience  stood  him  in 
good  stead  now,  though  the  stern  and  watchful  Miss 
Hall  put  a  quick  stop  to  a  certain  tendency  toward 
shoulder  work.  Tyler  possessed  what  is  known  as  a 
rhythm  sense.  An  expert  whistler  is  generally  a  natural 
dancer.  Stella  Kamps  had  always  waited  for  the  sound 
of  his  cheerful  whistle  as  he  turned  the  corner  of  Vernon 
Street.  High,  clear,  sweet,  true,  he  would  approach 
his  top  note  like  a  Tettrazini  until,  just  when  you 
thought  he  could  not  possibly  reach  that  dizzy  eminence 
he  did  reach  it,  and  held  it,  and  trilled  it,  bird-like, 
in  defiance  of  the  laws  of  vocal  equilibrium. 

His  dancing  was  much  like  that.  Never  a  half-beat 
behind  the  indefatigable  Miss  Weeks.  It  was  a  bit 
laboured,  at  first,  but  it  was  true.  Little  Miss  Hall, 
with  the  skilled  eye  of  the  specialist,  picked  him  at  a 
glance. 

"You've danced  before?" 

"No  ma'am." 

"Take  the  head  of  the  line,  please.  Watch  Mr. 
Kamps.  Now  then,  all  together,  please." 

And  they  were  off  again. 

At  9.45  Tyler   Kamps   and    Gunner  Moran  were 


360  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

standing  in  the  crowded  doorway  of  the  ballroom  up- 
stairs, in  a  panic  lest  some  girl  should  ask  them  to 
dance;  fearful  lest  they  be  passed  by.  Little  Miss 
Hall  had  brought  them  to  the  very  door,  had  left 
them  there  with  a  stern  injunction  not  to  move, 
and  had  sped  away  in  search  of  partners  for  them. 

Gunner  Moran's  great  scarlet  hands  were  knotted 
into  fists.  His  Adam's  apple  worked  convulsively. 

"Le's  duck,"  he  whispered  hoarsely.  The  Jackie 
band  in  the  corner  crashed  into  the  opening  bars  of  a 
fox  trot. 

"Oh,  it  don't  seem "     But  it  was  plain  that 

Tyler  was  weakening.  Another  moment  and  they 
would  have  turned  and  fled.  But  commg  toward 
them  was  little  Miss  Hall,  her  blonde  head  bobbing 
in  and  out  among  the  swaying  couples.  At  her  right 
and  left  was  a  girl.  Her  bright  eyes  held  her  two  vic- 
tims in  the  doorway.  They  watched  her  approach, 
and  were  helpless  to  flee.  They  seemed  to  be  gripped 
by  a  horrible  fascination.  Their  limbs  were  fluid. 

A  sort  of  groan  rent  Moran.  Miss  Hall  and  the  two 
girls  stood  before  them,  cool,  smiling,  unruffled. 

"Miss  Cunningham,  this  is  Mr.  Tyler  Kamps.  Mr. 
Moran,  Miss  Cunningham.  Miss  Drew — Mr.  Moran, 
Mr.  Kamps." 

The  boy  and  the  man  gulped,  bowed,  mumbled  some- 
thing. 

"Would  you  like  to  dance?"  said  Miss  Cunningham, 
and  raised  limpid  eyes  to  Tyler's. 


SHORE  LEAVE  361 

"  Why — I — you  see  I  don't  know  how.    I  just  started 

"Oh,  that's  all  right,"  Miss  Cunningham  interrupted, 
cheerfully.  "We'll  try  it."  She  stood  in  position 
and  there  seemed  to  radiate  from  her  a  certain  friend- 
liness, a  certain  assurance  and  understanding  that  was 
as  calming  as  it  was  stimulating.  In  a  sort  of  daze 
Tyler  found  himself  moving  over  the  floor  in  time  to 
the  music.  He  didn't  know  that  he  was  being  led, 
but  he  was.  She  didn't  try  to  talk.  He  breathed  a 
prayer  of  thanks  for  that.  She  seemed  to  know,  some- 
how, about  those  four  straight  steps  and  two  to  the 
right  and  two  to  the  left,  and  four  again,  and  turn- 
two,  turn-four.  He  didn't  know  that  he  was  counting 
aloud,  desperately.  He  didn't  even  know,  just  then, 
that  this  was  a  girl  he  was  dancing  with.  He  seemed 
to  move  automatically,  like  a  marionette.  He  never 
was  quite  clear  about  those  first  ten  minutes  of  his 
ballroom  experience. 

The  music  ceased.  A  spat  of  applause.  Tyler 
mopped  his  head,  and  his  hands,  and  applauded  too,  like 
one  hi  a  dream.  They  were  off  again  for  the  encore. 

Five  minutes  later  he  found  himself  seated  next 
Miss  Cunningham  in  a  chair  against  the  wall.  And  for 
the  first  time  since  their  meeting  the  mists  of  agony 
cleared  before  his  gaze  and  he  saw  Miss  Cunningham 
as  a  tall,  slim,  dark-haired  girl,  with  a  glint  of  mis- 
chief in  her  eye,  and  a  mouth  that  looked  as  if  she  were 
irying  to  keep  from  smiling. 


362  CHEERFUL—BY  REQUEST 

"Why  don't  you?"  Tyler  asked,  and  was  aghast. 

"  Why  don't  I  what?" 

"Smile  if  you  want  to." 

At  which  the  glint  in  her  eye  and  the  hidden  smile  on 
her  lips  sort  of  met  and  sparked  and  she  laughed. 
Tyler  laughed,  too,  and  then  they  laughed  together 
and  were  friends. 

Miss  Cunningham's  conversation  was  the  kind  of 
conversation  that  a  nice  girl  invariably  uses  in  putting 
at  ease  a  Jackie  whom  she  has  just  met  at  a  war  recrea- 
tion dance.  Nothing  could  have  been  more  common- 
place or  unoriginal,  but  to  Tyler  Kamps  the  brilliance 
of  a  Madame  de  Stael  would  have  sounded  trivial  and 
uninteresting  in  comparison. 

"Where  are  you  from?" 

"Why,  I'm  from  Texas,  ma'am.    Marvin,  Texas." 

"Is  that  so?  So  many  of  the  boys  are  from  Texas. 
Are  you  out  at  the  station  or  on  one  of  the  boats?" 

"I'm  on  the  Station.    Yes  ma'am." 

"Do  you  like  the  navy?" 

"Yes  ma'am,  I  do.  I  sure  do.  You  know  there 
isn't  a  drafted  man  in  the  navy.  No  ma'am!  We're 
all  enlisted  men." 

"When  do  you  think  the  war  will  end,  Mr.  Kamps?" 

He  told  her,  gravely.  He  told  her  many  other  things. 
He  told  her  about  Texas,  at  length  and  in  detail,  being 
a  true  son  of  that  Brobdingnagian  state.  Your  Texan 
born  is  a  walking  mass  of  statistics.  Miss  Cunningham 
made  a  sympathetic  and  interested  listener.  Her  brown 


SHORE   LEAVE  363 

eyes  were  round  and  bright  with  interest.  He  told  her 
that  the  distance  from  Texas  to  Chicago  was  only  half 
as  far  as  from  here  to  there  in  the  state  of  Texas  itself. 
Yes  ma1  am!  He  had  figures  about  tons  of  grain,  and 
heads  of  horses  and  herds  of  cattle.  Why,  say,  you 
could  take  little  ol'  meachin'  Germany  and  tuck  it 
away  in  a  corner  of  Texas  and  you  wouldn't  any 
more  know  it  was  there  than  if  it  was  somebody's 
poor  no-'count  ranch.  Why,  Big  Y  ranch  alone  would 
make  the  whole  country  of  Germany  look  like  a  cattle 
grazin'  patch.  It  was  bigger  than  all  those  countries 
in  Europe  strung  together,  and  every  man  in  Texas 
would  rather  fight  than  eat.  Yes  ma'am.  Why,  you 
couldn't  hold  'em. 

"My!"  breathed  Miss  Cunningham. 

They  danced  again.  Miss  Cunningham  introduced 
him  to  some  other  girls,  and  he  danced  with  them,  and 
they  in  turn  asked  him  about  the  station,  and  Texas,  and 
when  he  thought  the  war  would  end.  And  altogether  he 
had  a  beautiful  time  of  it,  and  forgot  completely  and 
entirely  about  Gunner  Moran.  It  was  not  until  he 
gallantly  escorted  Miss  Cunningham  downstairs  for 
refreshments  that  he  remembered  his  friend.  He  had 
procured  hot  chocolate  for  himself  and  Miss  Cunning- 
ham; and  sandwiches,  and  delectable  chunks  of  cara- 
mel cake.  And  they  were  talking,  and  eating,  and 
laughing  and  enjoying  themselves  hugely,  and  Tyler 
had  gone  back  for  more  cake  at  the  urgent  invitation 
of  the  white-haired,  pink-cheeked  woman  presiding  at 


364  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

the  white-clothed  table  in  the  centre  of  the  charming 
room.  And  then  he  had  remembered.  A  look  of  horror 
settled  down  over  his  face.  He  gasped. 

"W-what's  the  matter?"  demanded  Miss  Cunning- 
ham. 

"My — my  friend.  I  forgot  all  about  him."  He 
regarded  her  with  stricken  eyes. 

"Oh,  that's  all  right,"  Miss  Cunningham  assured 
him  for  the  second  tune  that  evening.  "We'll  just 
go  and  find  him.  He's  probably  forgotten  all  about 
you,  too." 

And  for  the  second  time  she  was  right.  They  started 
on  their  quest.  It  was  a  short  one.  Off  the  refresh- 
ment room  was  a  great,  gracious  comfortable  room 
all  deep  chairs,  and  soft  rugs,  and  hangings,  and  pic- 
tures and  shaded  lights.  All  about  sat  pairs  and  groups 
of  sailors  and  girls,  talking,  and  laughing  and  con- 
suming vast  quantities  of  cake.  And  in  the  centre  «f 
just  such  a  group  sat  Gunner  Moran,  lolling  at  his 
ease  in  a  rosy  velvet-upholstered  chair.  His  little 
finger  was  crookt  elegantly  over  his  cup.  A  large 
and  imposing  square  of  chocolate  cake  in  the  other 
hand  did  not  seem  to  cramp  his  gestures  as  he  talked. 
Neither  did  the  huge  bites  with  which  he  was  rapidly 
demolishing  it  seem  in  the  least  to  stifle  his  conver- 
sation. Four  particularly  pretty  girls,  and  two  matrons 
surrounded  him.  And  as  Tyler  and  Miss  Cunningham 
approached  him  he  was  saying,  "Well,  it's  got  so  I 
can't  sleep  in  anything  but  a  hammick.  Yessir!  Why, 


SHORE   LEAVE  365 

when  I  was  fifteen  years  old  I  was—  He  caught 

Tyler's  eye.  " Hello!"  he  called,  genially.  "Meet 
me  friend."  This  to  the  bevy  surrounding  him.  "I 
was  just  tellin'  these  ladies  here— 

And  he  was  off  again.  All  the  tales  that  he  told 
were  not  necessarily  true.  But  that  did  not  detract 
from  their  thrill.  Moran's  audience  grew  as  he  talked. 
And  he  talked  until  he  and  Tyler  had  to  run  all  the  way 
to  the  Northwestern  station  for  the  last  train  that 
would  get  them  on  the  Station  before  shore  leave 
expired.  Moran,  on  leaving,  shook  hands  like  a 
presidential  candidate. 

"I  never  met  up  with  a  finer  bunch  of  ladies,"  he 
assured  them,  again  and  again.  "Sure  I'm  comin' 
back  again.  Ask  me.  I've  had  a  elegant  time.  Ele- 
gant. I  never  met  a  finer  bunch  of  ladies." 

They  did  not  talk  much  in  the  train,  he  and  Tyler. 
It  was  a  sleepy  lot  of  boys  that  that  train  carried  back 
to  the  Great  Central  Naval  Station.  Tyler  was  un- 
dressed and  in  his  hammock  even  before  Moran,  the 
expert.  He  would  not  have  to  woo  sleep  to-night. 
Finally  Moran,  too,  had  swung  himself  up  to  his  pre- 
carious nest  and  relaxed  with  a  tired,  happy  grunt. 

Quiet  again  brooded  over  the  great  dim  barracks. 
Tyler  felt  himself  slipping  off  to  sleep,  deliciously.  She 
would  be  there  next  Saturday.  Her  first  name,  she 
had  said,  was  Myrtle.  An  awful  pretty  name  for  a 
girl.  Just  about  the  prettiest  he  had  ever  heard. 
Her  folks  invited  jackies  to  dinner  at  the  house  nearly 


366  CHEERFUL— BY  REQUEST 

every  Sunday.  Maybe,  if  they  gave  him  thirty-six 
hours'  leave  next  time 

"Hey,  Sweetheart!"  sounded  in  a  hissing  whisper 
from  Moran's  hammock. 

"What?" 

"Say,  was  that  four  steps  and  then  turn- turn,  or 
four  and  two  steps  t'  the  side?  I  kinda  forgot." 

"O,  shut  up!"  growled  Monicker,  from  the  other  side. 
"Let  a  fellow  sleep,  can't  you!  What  do  you  think  this 
is?  A  boarding  school!" 

"Shut  up  yourself!"  retorted  Tyler,  happily.  "It's 
four  steps,  and  two  to  the  right  and  two  to  the  left, 
and  four  again,  and  turn  two,  turn  two." 

"I  was  pretty  sure,"  said  Moran,  humbly.  And 
relaxed  again. 

Quiet  settled  down  upon  the  great  room.  There 
were  only  the  sounds  of  deep  regular  breathing,  with 
an  occasional  grunt  or  sigh.  The  normal  sleep  sounds 
of  very  tired  boys. 


THE  END 


COUNTRY  LOTS  PJUES6,  GABDEN  CUV,  MXW  YOKK 


THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  SANTA  CRUZ 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  DATE  stamped  below. 


100m-8,'65  (F6282s8)2373 


3TORED  AT  NRLF 


PS3511.E46C34  1919 


3  2106  00210  6521 


